


Unstable Solutions

by Tamoline



Series: Three Body Problems [2]
Category: Carrie - Stephen King
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F, Gen, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-22 15:54:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 29
Words: 45,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22418707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: After six months on the run, Carrie, Chris and Sue decide to actually do something other than just always being on the move. Something in this case being investigating a series of seemingly unrelated murders happening in a small town. But tensions are rising within the group and their history has not been forgotten.And nothing, absolutely nothing, will go according to plan.
Relationships: Chris Hargensen&Carrie White, Chris Hargensen/Susan Snell, Susan Snell/Carrie White
Series: Three Body Problems [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1605547
Comments: 65
Kudos: 46





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a somewhat different genre to Three Body Problem, but hopefully I can make it work. Please let me know if you've any criticism or advice. I've got the first draft of this done and I'm happy with the first third of the story, so I've decided to start posting a bit at a time, but rest assured this story will get completed. I've got some tentative ideas for later stories in the verse which might get written, depending on inspiration and interest.

The song of birds in the woods was drowned out by the cries of boys conducting a very serious expedition.

“Look,” one said, digging his knife into the bark of a tree and levering part of it off. “Doodle bugs and grubs!” He waved in the face of one of his compatriots, who made a disgusted face and batted it away.

“Ooh,” said the third. “I dare you to find out what’s in there.” He pointed to a hole in a tree, full of shadow and rot. “With your hand,” he added with relish. “No looking. Unless you’re a wiener, of course.”

The dare circled between them for a while, along with more names and shoving before one finally stuck his hand in there, screwing up his eyes as he did so.

“It’s all slimy,” he said with disgust, then, “Oh, there’s something in there.” He pulled out something encrusted with muck. After cleaning the worst of it off with leaves, it revealed that their treasure was in fact two things. A silvery amulet wrapped around a rusty kitchen knife.

“My knife’s much better than that,” the first boy said disdainfully.

“But maybe we can get a dollar or two for the necklace,” another said hopefully.

“Maybe five,” said the third as they turned back, eager to get back to town to pawn their find.

“Maybe even ten!” echoed around the trees as they left. The knife remained by itself in the dirt of the woods.

Waiting.


	2. Chris

The icy wind bit through Chris’ clothes as she huddled over the engine and tried to make her fingers work. She glowered through the hood in the direction of the two girls still inside the car. Why couldn’t they be out here, freezing their tits off in this weather? Oh yeah, she was the only one with the skills to even attempt to try and fix this. An unexpected gift from Billy that she didn’t even know she’d received until the car broke down that first time.

Lucky fucking her.

“Try it again!” she yelled after having finally managed to get everything tightened again.

To her utter relief, the engine lurched into life.

Finally.

Thank fucking Christ.

She stalked over to the passenger door and opened it, glaring at Carrie. “You, back seat.”

Carrie stared back at her resentfully, pinch-faced and far too warm, not moving an inch. 

“I don’t care that I’m always banished to the back seat when either you or Sue drive, but I’m going to need that hand heater or I will kill someone,” Chris snapped. “Are you really stupid enough to want to be in front of me when that happens?”

Carrie’s gaze hardened and with a tingle that ran all the way down Chris’ back, she wondered if this was it, that was the time that—

Sue reached over and touched Carrie on the arm. “Please?” she asked, sounding tired and done with it all. “I know she’s being a bitch, but…”

Carrie’s body softened and she glanced at Sue before getting out and sliding into the back.

“Thank you,” Sue said before looking significantly at Chris.

“Thank you,” Chris repeated with far less sincerity as she climbed into the front seat and cupped her hands in front of the heater. Her fingers started to tingle then she hissed as feeling flared along them.

“Are you alright?” Sue asked, sparing her a glance.

“Fine now,” she grumbled, refusing to move her fingers away from the stream of hot air, no matter how much they complained. “Bitch, huh?” she said, offering Sue a crooked smirk. “Fancy Saint Sue of the Snell using such language.”

Sue coloured, her jaw working, but she concentrated on the road ahead and said nothing.

Chris felt a familiar heat rising within her, making the remaining chill of the air in the car seem less than nothing. “Not saying that I’m complaining, of course.” And, okay, the thought of foul words passing Sue’s sweet lips while Chris did things to her was definitely a thought to investigate later. “It’s nice to know that I’m rubbing off on you. Kind of like last night.” She twisted around and cast a glance backwards to see Carrie going a most satisfactory shade of purple.

The joy of being cooped up pretty much all the time with the others was exactly the same as the problem — they all knew exactly what the others had — and hadn’t — done.

“Shut up!” Carrie practically screeched at her, the air vibrating around Chris. “Just, shut up and stop making her uncomfortable!”

Stop making Sue uncomfortable? Chris thought wryly, and opened her mouth to drive that dagger a little deeper when Sue snapped, “Stop it, both of you! If you can’t say anything nice, just don’t say anything at all.”

Chris paused and reconsidered her next words. She was just starting to feel warm. Did she really want to start something that could end up with having to duel for the shower tonight yet again? Assuming they managed to make it to a motel. Not to mention distinctly lowering her chances of doing anything that might blow some of this tension off.

Fuck it. She was too tired and out of sorts for this. “Fine,” she sighed, raising her hands in surrender briefly before returning them to in front of the vent. “Sue, you’ve managed to learn how to drive the Chevy in snow tolerably well. Carrie, you’re looking surprisingly cute today given the shitty soap, shampoo and conditioner we’ve been having to use.” She wasn’t lying. The months on the run, surviving on odd jobs with the occasional bit of petty larceny, had done wonders for Carrie’s waistline and complexion. Unlike Chris, who felt more and more like a wreck every time she looked in the mirror. Granted, not helped at the moment by the oil that was covering her hands and probably streaking her face.

The confidence that was becoming more and more a permanent visitor to Carrie’s demeanour didn’t hurt, either.

Sue rolled her eyes but seemed to accept her words at face value. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Carrie first looking uncertain, then blushing before glaring at her again, albeit slightly softer than before.

“Thank you, Chris,” Sue said a little resignedly. “You’re… almost nice when you try.” She smiled at the rear view mirror and Carrie smiled back. “And, Carrie, you’re so patient and so forgiving.”

Chris mimed gagging. Of course Sue would be far softer and fuzzier to Carrie. Not that Chris would want that, of course.

Carrie relaxed. “Sue,” she said simply. Then added, “You said I could only say nice things.”

Really? Really?

“Does that mean you can never say my name again?” Chris asked sweetly. Sue shot her a quelling look but, seriously, there could only be so much that she was expected to endure.

Carrie looked at her seriously for a moment, before shifting her gaze down and to the left. The car radio clicked on and music filled the air.

Fine. Maybe that was for the best anyway. Chris closed her eyes and let the vibration of the car carry her away.


	3. Sue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possibly rashly, I'm going to post the first few chapters in fairly rapid succession, to try and set up where the rest of the fic is going. Which does of course mean that I'm really going to have to get on with polishing the rest of the fic. Ah well.

Sue pushed open the door to the dilapidated motel room. Two beds, as promised. Maybe a little small for one to hold two people, but…

Yeah, she wasn’t going to force Carrie and Chris to share a bed. Not ever again.

Chris pushed past her and dumped her bag on the first bed. “There,” she said, then fished out her wash gear. “I’m taking first shower.” She threw a slanted grin Sue’s way, though she looked too done with it all to put much heat behind it. “Unless you’d like to join me?”

Sue blushed anyway, unable to stop a glance towards Carrie, who was sullenly claiming the far bed. One day she was going to be able to stop doing that. Today did not seem to be that day. “Pass,”she said then, trying to make a joke out of it. “I’m going to wait at least until you’ve washed those hands of yours.”

“Point,” Chris said and disappeared inside the attached washroom, closing the door after her.

Sue turned her attention back to Carrie. “Hey,” she said, walking up to her, placing a hand on her arm gently. “How are you feeling?”

Not great, if the friction between her and Chris earlier was any guide. Not great, if the increased tendencies for the others to snap at each other in general over the last few weeks was any guide. Being in each other’s pockets all the time for months on end would be hard for anyone, much less for girls who… had the fractious histories that Carrie and Chris did.

With the way that Chris had hurt Carrie for years, on and off. Not that she’d want to say that out loud, but it was what it was.

Carrie didn’t turn to face her, just continued to sort through the oddments she’d managed to assemble since they’d all fled Chamberlain. Her hand lingered on a porcelain cross and Sue could just about see her lips press together.

“You can pray if you want to,” Sue said softly. For that matter, it might be best to do so now, before Chris finished in the shower. Sue’s stomach twisted uncomfortably, remembering some of the arguments between the two. Remembering the flaming row two nights ago when Carrie had announced that she was going to pray for Chris’ soul.

Carrie shot her an uncertain glance, but her hand gripped the cross harder.

“Could I pray with you?” Sue asked, feeling like a hypocrite, but knowing that she’d made the right decision when Carrie’s shoulders loosened. She hated that Carrie seemed to feel this way, like Sue’s affection was conditional on Carrie, well, not being Carrie.

Carrie balanced the cross on the bedside cabinet and got down on the floor in front of it, putting her hands together, head bowed, lips flapping silently. Sue knelt next to her and imitated her posture, but kept her prayers entirely internal.

Please, God, she prayed. Please let these girls get on better with each other, find some kind of balance. To let Chris find a way to curb her tongue, and Carrie to…

She pursed her lips, unwilling to put that into words even in her own head. For Carrie to find peace, she finally decided.

Maybe being here, in this town, would help, though Sue couldn’t help doubting it. And just thinking about why they were here made her breathing want to quicken, and not in a pleasant way.

Finally Carrie lowered her hands, seemingly a little happier, and Sue couldn’t help feeling relieved. “Feel better?” she asked.

Carrie twisted around to smile at her, and leaned in for a kiss, as gentle as always, bare lips pressing against hers, and Sue couldn’t help smiling back into it. This was one of her favourite sides of Carrie; slow, unhurried making out, where nothing else really existed. It had taken them a while to get here, longer before Carrie would initiate things, but here they were now, and it wasn’t so bad. 

It wasn’t so bad at all.

She let her gaze drift up and down Carrie’s face. Sharper now, more defined. There were times that she missed the soft curves that Carrie’d had back when they’d all been eating properly, but Carrie at least seemed happier this way, so Sue didn’t really mind either.

Sue couldn’t help tensing as Carrie’s hand drifted upwards into more dangerous territory, as Sue’s body reminded her that she didn’t just like Carrie like this, with soft kisses and nothing else, nothing more…

Carrie’s face fell as Sue pulled away. “Sorry,” Sue said, aching for her. She shouldn’t have led her on like that. And she couldn’t help an internal shudder at the thought of touching Carrie like that. 

Carrie was far too good for that.

“Can someone get my towel?” Chris called from the washroom, and Sue stifled a sigh of relief, blessing Chris’ timing. 

“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and rolled to her feet, suddenly acutely aware of how her knees were complaining — and why hadn’t they moved to the bed, wouldn’t that have been a more sensible idea? — and collected the striped towel from Chris’ bag.

It was a little sad, but Sue couldn’t even remember which place Chris had stolen this one from. She tended to change things up every time she got a chance to take a new one, leaving the stained one behind. Warm air escaped as she opened the washroom door. Chris was staring directly at her, wearing nothing but a crooked smile, sharp body angled for sin.

“I’ve managed to clean my hands,” she said, waving them at Sue.

Eep.

Sue found it hard to think as Chris prowled towards her, obviously not having just getting dry on her mind. It was…she should be better at this by now, shouldn’t be hypnotised by the wobble of Chris’ breasts, the sway of her hips as she took step, after step, after step.

Chris reached down and grabbed the end of the towel. “Come here,” she said, tugging Sue by the towel still clutched in her hands, and Sue couldn’t help following. Didn’t want to help. Behind her, she could dimly hear Carrie starting to pray out loud, the exact words escaping her, before Chris’s arm reached past her and pushed the washroom door closed.

Thankfully.

She didn’t… she couldn’t have Carrie see her like this. With Chris. Touching Chris like this as she juddered into motion, greedily reaching for one of the breasts with one hand whilst the other felt compelled to find out whether Chris was as hungry, as ready Down There as she looked.

She was.

Chris hissed, arching her neck, walking them both backwards until her back was against the tiled wall. “Someone’s eager tonight,” she murmured throatily, tilting her neck a little and Sue couldn’t resist leaning into to give her a little nibble. Chris moaned again and, oh god, Sue could already feel herself getting Ready Down There herself.

Chris’s hand worked its way underneath Sue’s skirt, half trailing, half scratching with blunt fingernails its way up her thigh and…

Oh, god. Sue hated to admit that this was easier, that when they were doing this, she didn’t have to think too much, had to thank Chris for being here, for doing this to her, for satisfying these ravening urges she awakened, because Sue couldn’t… couldn’t… couldn’t…

The faint murmur of Carrie praying next door washed over her like a splash of cold water. She shook her head, screwed up her eyes and redoubled her concentration on what her hands, her mouth were doing to Chris, what Chris’ hands and mouth were doing to her and… and… and…

This time nothing stopped the pleasure from peaking within her, again and again as Chris joined her, shuddering beneath her touch. Finally she came to herself with the old feeling of shame still coursing through her veins in the aftermath. There was still a part of her that couldn’t believe she was one of Those Girls, who gloried in Doing It. It helped that she had Chris to do this with, who had absolutely no shame about belonging to that sisterhood, but…

But.

She stepped away, clutching her hands to herself before stumbling over to the washbasin to clean them thoroughly. She caught a glimpse of Chris in the steamed up mirror, the smile on her face almost bittersweet before she righted it and it just became cynical. Chris dried herself off with quick, practical motions before nodding to the door.

“Do you think I should leave it a few more minutes just to make sure that Sister Proper out there doesn’t try to exorcise me?”

And there went the last remnants of any afterglow. “Do you really have to always snipe at her?” she snapped. “Even when she’s not here?”

Chris shrugged jerkily and moved over next to Sue, and started brushing her hair, towel wrapped around her midriff. “Would you prefer that I did it when she was here?” She rolled her eyes. “Don’t bother to answer that. I’ll be good. I was planning on heading out anyway. Get the lay of the land. See if I can get any information on the recent...” She made stabbing motions with the brush. “And at least it’ll get me out of both of your hair right?”

Sue couldn’t help shivering and moved closer to her. Not quite enough to touch, but enough that she could imagine she could feel the presence of Chris’ body. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

Chris gave her humourless smile. “No, of course not. But if it really is someone like her and not just a case of small town crazy, where is safe? Besides, if she’s right, then the DSI will be turning up sooner or later. Hell, they could already be here, and where better to find that out than the local bar?”

And, yes, things in the room would undoubtedly be simpler with her gone. And, yes, Chris was undoubtedly the best person to go scout things out, but… Sue let herself wrap her arms around Chris, as near naked as she still was. Just briefly. Just enough. “Just, look after yourself, okay?” she murmured into the side of her head.

And as sometimes happened when Sue fussed over her like this, there was a flash of… something in Chris’ eyes before she finished brushing her hair to her satisfaction. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Was totally planning on it.”

And as she left, Sue stayed behind in the washroom, finally managing to take a moment or two for just herself. She gave herself ten breaths, in and out.

Just enough to let herself feel like she could actually breathe for the first time all day.

Not enough to let anything so silly as a sob escape.


	4. Carrie

Carrie shifted restlessly in the cramped bed, her body pressed tightly up against Sue’s, Sue’s arms wrapped around her. Sue’s heat, her pulse, her thoughts lighting up Carrie’s nerves. Everything she wanted within reach, yet it might as well have been a million miles away.

Sue didn’t want her that way. She’d made that clear again and again, repeating the ritual just today. Happy to kiss Carrie, always turning to Chris for something more.

It was fine, she tried to tell herself. It was enough. It wasn’t as though she really knew what she wanted, only that she did. So it didn’t matter, not really.

Did it?

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Sue murmured, her breath tickling the hair around Carrie’s neck, making her repress a shiver, followed swiftly by an ugly feeling rising from deep within her.

She didn’t care about Chris, she wanted to cry. Couldn’t care less about where she was as long as it wasn’t here. But apparently Sue was there, with Chris, in spirit even if she’d stayed with Carrie in body. And Sue… Sue was worried about Chris.

Carrie reached out with her mind, searching for the touch of a familiar mind, found the sharp edges of Chris’ mind, dulled a little by the haze of alcohol and also…

She retreated before she feel that much more, anger sparking within her belly. She couldn’t believe that Chris would… That even Chris could be so dirty and sinful to betray Sue like that.

Even Chris.

“She’s fine,” she bit out.

“Thank you,” Sue said gratefully, squeezing Carrie in a hug. “I appreciate you looking out for her like that.”

It was too much, Sue being so worried for someone who was doing things like that. But Carrie wouldn’t, she couldn’t be as spiteful as Chris would be if she were in Carrie’s shoes. “Anything for you,” she said and Sue squeezed her again.

“Have you… have you felt anything here yet?” Sue asked, a little nervously.

Carrie reached out again, not entirely sure what she was searching for, just hoping that she’d recognise it when she found it. Nothing nearby, just the hum of a few people. She pushed out further and further, disregarding her usual limits in her frustration, her need. Her pulse started to race, her face flushing, her breath starting to come in short bursts. People, people, nothing but just people, a generalised rusty undertaste of fear, nervousness hanging like an acrid mist over the town.

Nothing that answered her, nothing that stood out, nothing but normal, boring mundanity. For a moment, she had a mad impulse to keep going, to push onwards, to see if she could touch Momma, see how she was; a moment of comfort in all of this.

But no. She couldn’t, wouldn’t. Instead she collected herself, pushed herself back into her body to find bright, shining Sue shaking her. “Are you alright?” Sue asked, eyes wide and nervous in the darkness.

Carrie felt her heart rate slowly return to normal. ‘Fine,” she croaked, then cleared her throat. “Fine,” she said in a more normal voice. “I couldn’t feel anything odd.”

Sue looked at her for a few moments longer, then lay her head on Carrie’s chest. “Nothing?” she echoed. “Then maybe Chris is right, and it is all some kind of crazy coincidence.”

Three separate people going crazy in the last few months and stabbing people to death? Maybe. But something in Carrie told her that there was something else going on. Something that had called to her across the country.

Something that said maybe she wasn’t alone, that maybe there was someone else with powers akin to hers, even if they were using it like this.

That maybe she could walk them down a different path or, if not, maybe she could stop them.

Sue had supported her this far, even against Chris, but maybe…

Maybe it wasn’t fair to drag her into this, not when there was so little she could do. “Maybe,” Carrie allowed, forcing the words past her lips. “If you want, you could take Chris and leave me for a week or two? Come back for me when I’ve had a chance to look things over?”

Sue bit her lip, obviously looking tempted. Carrie’s heart leapt up into her throat. Sue could do it, leave with Chris, leave the deadweight that was Carrie behind.

Maybe they wouldn’t even come back. Chris would undoubtedly prefer that. Maybe Sue would too.

Before Sue could reply, Chris blew into the room, smelling of beer and cigarette smoke and betrayal. “What’s up, losers?” she said before flopping down on the bed, laying down as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Sue shifted around to look into Chris’ direction, turning her back on Carrie, and suddenly something snapped inside of her. Chris didn’t deserve this; didn’t deserve Sue looking at her, worrying about her like that.

“Why don’t you tell us what you’ve been doing, Chris?” she spat. “How you’ve been having fun while you were at the bar?”

Chris blinked stupidly at her for a moment before a cruel smile spread across her face. “Why, Carrie, I never knew you were the peeping type. Guess you must need to get your jollies somehow, given you’re not getting anything anywhere else.” Sue rose, her face contorted with distress, but Chris kept on talking, raising her voice to drown Sue out. “Is that what gets you off? Is that the only thing that can get you off, since you know.” She nodded at Sue.

With a howl, Carrie lifted Chris up and threw her against the wall, pinning her there helplessly with her mind. “Shut up!” she shouted. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

Chris’ face was white and for once she wasn’t using that mouth to sling cruelty and meanness at Carrie. A helpless, trembling fear radiated from her as Carrie pushed in with her mind, could feel her frantically trying to reassemble a semblance of defiance. And beneath that, in a small corner of her mind, Carrie could feel that there was a part of Chris that was enjoying this, a heat rising up inside her and twisting within the fear.

A sick kind of pleasure rose in Carrie as Chris stared at her, humiliation blooming as she realised that Carrie was reading her, reading everything within her. How did she like that, a part of Carrie couldn’t help thinking. To have her secrets exposed to the world, where everyone could laugh at them. And suddenly Carrie couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer.

“I’m supposed to what, have forgiven you for years of making my life a misery? Just forgotten about it because we’ve been stuck together like this? How can I? How can I possibly forget, or forgive, when you do nothing but pick, pick, pick at me all day long? How can I possibly think that you’re sorry when you’ve never given me so much as one sincere apology in all the time we’ve been together?”

Chris stared back at her, white-faced and gasping, as Carrie could feel the pressure she was exerting against her building, building, building. No pleasure now, just terror.

“Answer me!” she howled.

“Carrie, please!” Sue’s voice finally cut through Carrie’s fury and focus and Carrie dropped Chris with a flinch, suddenly feeling empty and sick, the aftermath of anger nothing but ashes in her mouth. Sue remained, arm slung around her, making calming motions with her hand across Carrie’s back.

What had she been thinking? Why she was no better than… no better than Chris, like a child pulling wings off flies just because she could. Regret bubbled within her as she shrugged off Sue’s arm.

She didn’t deserve it, didn’t deserve the comfort Sue was offering. Certainly not while she couldn’t help feeling the nervousness Sue was radiating. She was just trying to find the words to explain some of this when Chris stood up, looking coldly at the two of them.

“That’s it,” she said, brushing herself off. “I’m done. You two… I don’t care what you do. I’ll find my own way. You can find your own way out of this place.” She grabbed her bag and was out of the door before either of the others could react.

“Wait,” said Sue in a small voice, reaching towards the door, unable to look at Carrie.

Not that she should.

Not that she should.

It turned out that it was just as well there were two beds in the room after all.


	5. Chris

The next morning, Chris marched down what passed for the high street of this pitiful little town, crunching snow underfoot. Her stomach was still churning as she thought back to last night. Sure, she’d burned her bridges with Carrie and Sue, but the writing had been on that wall for, well, ever since the start if she was going to be brutally honest with herself. No matter how much she’d found herself liking Sue, no matter how even a certain affection for Carrie had rooted itself within her — most of the time at least — it wasn’t as though staying with them was ever going to be a long term thing.

Having to spend most of her time around the other two while having to watch their collective backs? It had always had an expiration date, no matter how much she might have hoped differently in the early days, when anything had seemed possible once they’d left Chamberlain behind.

But what was really making her stomach twist was the way a part of her had enjoyed Carrie pinning her helplessly against the wall. She’d thought that part of her had been burned out after… After what happened those last days in Chamberlain. But apparently it was still there, waiting for someone to threaten to hurt her again. Or not just threaten.

Was she really that broken? Had… he really managed to leave his imprint on her that deeply?

Hell, was that why she’d been unable to keep prodding at Carrie whenever her nerves got the slightest bit raw? Had something within her been hoping to provoke Carrie into doing something just like this?

She considered and had to laugh. No, it wasn’t that. Certainly not mostly that. Chris was a bitch, and she couldn’t ever see that changing. Poke her and she’d come back snapping.

She was fairly certain that was the case, anyway.

Finally she reached her destination — the lone podunk garage in this place. 

“Hello?” she called.

There was a squeak and, shortly afterwards, a grey haired man appeared over the hood of a car. “If you need something done to your car, you’ll have to take a ticket. I’m kinda busy here.”

If even half the cars in the lot outside were for the garage, she had to agree. Luckily… “I can handle that side of things myself. I was more looking for a few extra things for my toolbox.”

“A few extra things?” He eyed her appraisingly before asking her a rapid fire series of questions about mechanics. She got halfway through them before drawing back.

“Hey, what the hell? I don’t need a fucking quiz to prove that I know what to do with a set of wrenches just because I’ve got a pair of breasts.” Honestly, she was a little ashamed that it took her that long. She really must be off her game.

He cackled. “Never said you did. Fact is that I’m kind of snowed under with work here” —he cackled again at his own joke— “as every joker who’s forgotten to look after their car all year suddenly remembers it might be a good idea because the first snow’s fallen. Was wondering, since you seem to know your stuff at least a little, if you could start taking a look at the cars and trucks I’ve yet to get to, give me some idea about what to expect, whether it’s just a checkup or something worse. Help me prior-i-tise. Figure that ought to be worth a little spending cash if you do a good job, and if you work all day, I’ll throw in those tools you want for free.”

His long and rambling speech gave Chris’ blood time to cool. And, well, it wasn’t as though she had anything else to do today. Anything really to do for the rest of her life. And some extra cash certainly couldn’t hurt. So, fuck it. “Sure,” she said. “Think I can find time for that.” She stuck out her hand. “Anne,” she said, repeating the name she’d used last night at the bar. “Anne Majors.”

He took her hand in his paw and shook it firmly. “Gary Gilpatrick. Pleased to meet ya.”

She raised her eyebrow. “And you really trust me that much after having just met me?”

He shrugged. “Got a good feeling about you, what can I say? You kind of remind me of my sister, when she was young.”

“Fair enough. Got some coveralls I could borrow?”

He went into the back and came back with a pair that were surely too small for him. He noticed her looking. “They used to be my nephew’s before he got himself another job a few towns over.”

She climbed into them. They were still a bit big, but Gary had also found some ties that helped contain the worst of the flap. And then she got to work.

There was something comforting about doing this, about being able to just get completely out of her own head. Just losing herself in something, even if it was just machinery. It was a state of mind she hadn’t had in far too long. Gary liked to talk, didn’t mind answering questions and trusted her to make some of the simpler repairs by herself. “Though I’ll be looking at them later, just to check, you understand.”

It was easier, so much easier, than anything had been in such a long time.

“Hey,” came a voice from last night at the bar. “Heard there was a pretty stranger working down here at Triple Gs. Thought I’d try my luck, see if you wanted to break for lunch.”

She carefully composed a smile before turning around. “Hey, Deputy,” she said. “Pleasant sight for sore eyes.”

Gabriel was artfully slouched against the wall, a grin on his lips that looked like he’d practiced it in a mirror. He wasn’t… bad looking, but he was clearly the kind of guy who’d been in the football team in high school and still thought that a fit body and a cocky attitude was the way to win girls.

“So?” he said. “What do you say we blow this popsicle stand?”

She considered. He’d been a pleasant way to spend much of the evening yesterday; someone she’d even given a passing thought to doing more with. After all, it wasn’t as though — even before she’d blown everything up — her relationship with Sue was exactly what anyone could call exclusive. And though she didn’t give a shit about Carrie’s glorious mission now, the basic idea of befriending someone in the sheriff’s office still held. If nothing else, the thought of spending some more days in this place, earning some more money before she moved on if Gary was so minded, was awfully tempting.

And, hey, maybe she could get him to pay for lunch. It wasn’t as though she had any other offers.

“Sounds great,” she said. “Let me go wash my hands and tell Gary.”

Gary basically chased her off with “Not going to do anyone any good if you fall over on the job, now are you?” and a short time later she down at the diner looking at a greasy burger and fries. Not exactly her preferred diet, even if it was something she’d had to become far too familiar with over the last several months. Even worse, she was having to avoid Sue’s eyes, because of course she’d managed to secure a waitress job here.

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to go back, no matter how Sue’s eyes kept on creeping towards her. Not after the way that Carrie had hurt her. She’d promised herself that much.

Gabriel, on the other hand, tore into his meal as though he hadn’t seen food in days. If he noticed the tension between her and Sue he didn’t mention it, and at the very least he was a distraction from her. He definitely wasn’t Chris’ type — well, hadn’t been in the old days but who knew in this brave new world? Still, probably not, but he certainly didn’t have any problems filling the conversation. Between hunting, high school — football team, natch — and veiled hints about the work he’d already done for the sheriff, there wasn’t much she needed to do apart from concentrate on him, nod and smile pleasantly.

And maybe entertain some pleasant thoughts about how she could shut that mouth of his in the moments she could manage to focus on such. 

Not that she’d put them into practice, of course. He didn’t seem to be the type, and there was no sense in making an enemy with this much influence by suggesting it in the first place.

Still, she went back to work with a promise to see him afterwards. Maybe she could persuade him that she could offer a home cooked meal. Not exactly her forte, but at this point she’d kind of kill for something with fresh, non-fried vegetables. She might even sleep with him, if it looked like things might turn sour if she didn’t.

The rest of the afternoon came and went relatively quickly. It was dark by the time Gary called over that he was about to start locking up, then came over to her, bills in hand.

“I knew I had a good feeling about you, Anne,” he said, handing over a number of crumpled ten dollar bills. “Gave you a bit extra, on account of the good work you did today. Want to sort out your tools now, or are you going to be staying in town a bit longer? Could do with some more help next few days.”

Her first instinct was to grab the tools now. She was well aware of things could so quickly go wrong. But, if she was going to hanging out with Gabriel… “I’ll take a couple of wrenches now,” she decided. Just in case the thing with Gabriel went bad, if nothing else. “Maybe take a look at the rest tomorrow, before I start work?”

Gary’s face broke out into a huge grin. “Sounds great. See you tomorrow!” He took her hand again and shook with both of his.

Gabriel was waiting outside for her, slouched against his truck. “Still feeling like that date?”

“What’s your opinion on home cooked meals?” she asked with a slight smirk.

He lit up. Easy. “Sounds great!” 

His radio crackled. “This is dispatch. All units respond. Trouble at the McCrae house.”

His eyes darted towards his set. “Uh, mind if I check in?” Even before he’d finished talking, he was darting towards the driver’s door.

She went up to the passenger sided, shamelessly listening in as he picked up the mike. “Suarez here. What’s happening?”

“Reports of someone with a knife up at the McCrae house. All hands on deck.”

Gabriel went pale. “Fuck!” he said before pressing the broadcast button. “Roger. On my way.” He turned a grin Chris’ direction that was probably intended to look sheepish, but was mostly just shaky. “Sorry, have to go.”

A knife thing. Fuck. Just what Carrie had been determined to investigate. And what were the chances she and Sue weren’t wrapped up in what was happening? Chris was out of this. She didn’t care anymore. She didn’t.

She forced a smile anyway. “Say, mind if I tag along?” She made her eyes grow hungry. “I’d really kind of like to see you in action.”

Gabriel laughed, a sharp, surprised noise. “Uh, sure,” he said seemingly automatically, before sobering. “I mean, what? I know you’re new to town, but… Haven’t you heard? It’s not going to be… It’s really not the kind of thing I want you to see. What anyone should see,” he murmured as if to himself.

Fuck. That serious? And Carrie and Sue would doubtless be walking into it? Not that Carrie couldn’t be terrifying all by herself, but…

Okay, different tack. She swallowed, looking more serious. “If it’s that bad, I’d prefer to be near to you. Safer, you know?”

He swallowed, mirroring her. “Okay, yeah. That makes sense, I guess.” He laughed again, a hint of nerves making him far more human, more real, than all the previous time they’d spent together had. “Just… stay in the car, okay?”

“Sure,” she said. “Whatever you say.”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity-fuck.

What the hell was she doing?


	6. Sue

When Sue woke, her eyelids were gummy with unshed tears. She was in bed alone, for pretty much the first time in months.

And then last night came rushing back to her. Chris was gone and it felt like she’d taken a part of Sue with her. And Carrie… Carrie had lashed out at Chris with her power, like she’d promised she wouldn’t do again.

Sue didn’t know what she was going to do, and just the thought made her want to start crying again.

No time for that though. Regardless of whether they were going to have to find their own wheels out of this town — and just the thought of that seemed like an abyss yawning beneath her feet that she wasn’t prepared to even look at right now — they needed money. And getting odd jobs was one thing that Sue excelled at. She could almost hear Chris saying — almost sneering, but not quite, not really — that it was due to her soft eyes and complete lack of guile that made strangers know they could take advantage of her. 

But she couldn’t think too much about that right now.

She pushed herself off the bed — plenty of room to do that today — and had a shower, scrubbing her face to make sure that she got the last of the tears. As she was brushing her hair afterwards, she tried various smiles on in the mirror until she found one that fit on the reflected girl’s face.

“Hi,” she told her. “I’m in town for a few days and I was wondering if you had any jobs available. Don’t mind what — just hoping to earn a little cash before I move on.”

She’d believe that girl. She would.

Carrie was like a mournful ghost when she left the washroom, refusing to look at her, flinching a little whenever she said anything, as if she were expecting Sue to hit her, like her awful mother. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, but… She couldn’t deny that she was disappointed either.

And maybe a little afraid.

Not that Carrie would ever use her powers on her — of course not — but she’d been doing so much better with her control, which…

Which meant that Carrie had actually meant to do that to Chris last night. Which meant, after all, that maybe what was broken should remain broken.

Oh god.

She couldn’t think about that. She wouldn’t think about that. “I’m off out now, see if there’s anything I can find in town,” she announced as brightly as she could. “I’m sure you can” — she waved vaguely in the air — “find the person who’s causing the stuff. Just promise me you’ll wait before confronting them.” She ducked down to look Carrie in the face as much as she could and, for the first time this morning, reached out to touch her. “I know I won’t be much use, but some back up has to be better than none, right?”

Carrie looked up at her, also for the first time this morning. “You sure?”

It was Sue’s turn to flinch, and she felt renewed prickling at the corners of her eyes. “You don’t think I’ll be any use whatsoever?”

Carrie looked horrified.”No! No, I meant…” She shrugged self consciously. “You sure that you don’t want to find Chris, leave this place? I know you didn’t really wanna come, no matter that you backed me up. And now…” She shrugged again, staring down at her lap. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

It hurt her chest to see Carrie so clearly in pain. She moved over to Carrie’s bed, knelt down in front of it and reached forward, clutching her hand. “I’m not going to leave you, you hear? I’m just… we need some money, and it isn’t as though I’m going to do much good, staying here.” She smiled a little uncertainly. “I can if you want, though.”

Carrie studied Sue’s hand wrapped around hers. “No, you’re right. With Chris gone, we’re both going to need to get some cash before we can even think about leaving. Do you… Do you mind if I just spend the day looking into the murders?” Her voice was high and questioning, and not something Sue could bear to resist in the current circumstances.

“Of course not,” Sue said, rising to her feet. “I guess I better get prepared for the town, see what I can find.”

It was relatively quiet, the snow decorating the sidewalk and buildings even if had been mostly cleared from the roads already. There were only a few cars moving around and only a few people too at this time of day, caught between the rush of the early morning as people made their way to work and the buzz of lunchtime. Sue managed to find a few patches of yet untouched snow on the sidewalks and took a certain pleasure in crunching them underfoot, like she’d used to do when she was young.

Simple joys that seemed to belong to so long ago.

Soon enough she was at the high street and she started moving from shop to shop, seeing if anyone had a position for a few days, or knew anyone who did. The first few places she was met with shakes of the head and polite refusals. She finally struck if not gold, then hopefully copper, maybe even silver at a place with the unlikely name of Zack’s Pawn and Shake.

“You’re in luck,” said the iron-haired woman behind the counter, standing pretty much at the boundary point between the half of the shop done up like a diner, and the half that held racks of pawned goods. Which was a choice, Sue supposed. “I do happen to need a waitress after Dima — bless her heart — slipped on the ice yesterday morning and twisted her ankle. Doc Simons says that she’ll need to be off it for the next week, so I could surely do with someone to take her place. You have any experience with bussing tables?”

“I’ve done all sorts,” Sue said, trying and probably failing not to seem too eager.

The woman nodded. “Well, guess I’ll see how you do. I dock a dollar for each mistake. Uniform’s in the red locker through the door behind the counter. Feel free to introduce yourself to the kitchen crew.”

“I’m Ellen by the way,” Sue said.

Another nod. “Like I said, feel free to introduce yourself to the kitchen crew.”

Wow, friendly. Still, a job was a job. Depending on how fine-happy the woman was, anyway. She popped behind the counter and into the backroom.

“Yeah, Mrs Finlay is like that,” a short woman who had introduced herself as Sara said. She seemed to be one half of the kitchen crew, ginger hair straining to break its way out of her hair net. “She’s… well. I guess this is a place which has jobs, I guess.”

“It’s not that bad,” the other half, Mike, disagreed. He was taller, dark haired, with pockmarks on his face. “I mean, sure she’ll get on your case about every little error. But it’s not like we have to worry about the place going out of business any time soon.”

“That’s true enough,” Sara said darkly. “Still, welcome to the family. For however long you last.”

Wow. That was promising. “Uh, thanks. So, who’s Zack? Is he any better?”

“Ha,” Sara said. “Welcome to one of the town’s enduring mysteries. No one knows who Zack is. Finlay inherited the pawn shop from her father and her husband ran the diner. After he died, she decided to knock the wall down between the two and call it that. But Zack wasn’t his name. Her father’s either.”

“There was quite the buzz around town about that,” Mike agreed.

“Okay…” Sue said. Whatever. More small town drama. It didn’t really matter. “I guess I better start serving.”

“Best of luck,” Sara called after her.

It didn’t start off too bad, all things considered. She lost a couple of dollars in the first hour because she didn’t do things quite to Mrs Finlay’s expectations, but she only had to be told once and she got it. Doing this kind of thing in over a dozen states ever since Chamberlain had apparently paid off. She even got a nod of approval halfway through the lunch rush.

Which was of course when Chris walked in.

Chris’ attention was focussed on her companion, a fit guy in a deputy’s uniform. It felt like Sue was being punched in the chest.

Carrie hadn’t been wrong, hadn’t been completely wrong. Chris had apparently wasted absolutely no time in moving on, finding her own life. Sue supposed that she should feel glad for her, that she’d apparently landed on her feet, but she couldn’t quite manage it.

It felt like she’d never mattered to Chris, like she’d never existed in her life at all. 

It shredded the wound within her all over again.

Chris finally seemed to notice her, freezing ever so slightly before turning back to her friend and smiling all the harder, completely cutting her out.

Which was fine, completely fine, if that was how she wanted to play it.

“Ahem,” Mrs Finlay said. “No smile when greeting new customers. That’ll be a dollar.”

Great. Just what she needed. She painted a smile stubbornly on her face and went to take their order.

The thing was, this wasn’t completely new behaviour. When things were tense between them, Chris often went out to a local bar; sometimes flirted with someone, occasionally did more. Carrie had never liked it, but Sue… It wasn’t something Sue particularly liked, but it also wasn’t something that she felt could complain about, considering. She just… She’d just tried to do her best to hope that Chris got whatever she wanted out of the encounters, tried to be secure in the knowledge that those had been temporary whereas what she shared with Chris was more permanent.

Now she couldn’t help worrying that maybe it had been just as temporary as anything else Chris had indulged in; that it had just seemed different because they’d been continually coming into contact.

Maybe their relationship had never really meant anything to Chris at all.

Sue felt like she wanted to cry, but that’d doubtless just be another dollar or more, so she did her best to struggle on. She breathed a sigh of relief when Chris finally left.

There was a quiet moment in the afternoon when she was trying to do anything other than let endless plans cycle through her mind — how she was going to fix things, how she was going to get both Carrie and Chris to see sense — when her eyes fell upon a silver locket embedded with a blue stone in the centre. It was just a cheap little thing, but something about it spoke to her. Somehow, it made her feel like things could get a little better.

“How much is that?” she asked Mrs Finlay before she could think better of it.

“With the staff discount? Ten dollars.”

“Oh, thanks,” she said, resisting the urge to just buy it immediately.

It was more than they could afford, she was sure, but her mind kept circling back to it again and again over the afternoon. Probably because it was less painful than dwelling on Chris and Carrie, but still. It had been so long since she’d bought something just for herself, done anything purely for herself, always burying herself in the endless drama between Carrie and Chris. Didn’t she deserve something like this, just once? Just something to take her mind off everything.

Maybe it’d look nice on her, make her feel attractive for once rather than always the nag, trying to drag down everyone else.

“Okay,” she said at the end of the shift. “I’ll take it.”

Mrs Finlay nodded and rang it up, putting it in a bag. “I’ll give you five dollars if you want to return it, assuming it isn’t banged up,” she said.

Sue was fairly sure that she wouldn’t be doing that. She didn’t wait before tearing the bag open and putting it on. The metal was a cold circle around her neck that quickly faded into the background.

She… She didn’t feel like going back to the motel, like facing Carrie just yet. Chris either, for that matter, assuming she wasn’t planning on going home with that guy. She headed back to the kitchen and chatted with Sara and Mike for a while. Conversation flowed easily enough, about how Sara’d recently hooked up with her ex again — a decision that Mike emphatically disagreed with — and how Mike was hoping to save enough to get his own place sometime soon, as well as about the more usual gossip.

The murders only came up once, briefly, when Mike mentioned how his cousin still wasn’t doing well, but he changed the subject quickly again, the topic still obviously an open wound. She knew that Chris would undoubtedly press, maybe try to offer false sympathies in an effort to gain more information, assuming she cared enough to ask in the first place.

Sue had never been that hard though, never wanted to cause pain if she could offer peace instead, so she politely dropped the subject instead.

Patty, the waitress who took evening shift today, came back with a message from Mrs Finlay about how there wasn’t any room in the kitchen for freeloaders and it was obviously time to go. Sue made her apologies and left through the back entrance, into the afternoon cold that didn’t seem to bite quite as hard as it had this morning.

Still not quite able to face going back to the motel, she decided to explore the town a little more first, crunching her way in a random direction off main street, not really paying attention to where she was going.

When she reached the outskirts of town, she kept going into the woods. Just for a little bit, she told herself. Just for a little bit.


	7. Carrie

After Sue left the room, Carrie collapsed back on her bed, covered her head with the thin pillow and just stayed there for far longer than was reasonable. The tattered remnants of regret fluttered within her, as did the ashes of righteous anger.

Everyone was going to leave, she was completely certain. She couldn’t even blame them. Even though she’d been right, even though a reckoning between her and Chris had been long since due.

Even though Chris had never apologised, not once, for what she’d done.

Being righteous had never changed anything in the eyes of the world, Momma had often said. Only in the eyes of the Lord. She took out the cross and prayed for guidance, but didn’t receive any answer. Just like always, a heretical part of her whispered.

After she’d finished praying, she decided that even if she couldn’t face the world just yet, she could at least do something else useful. She started digging through her mending bag. The first thing she came across was Chris’ denim shirt, a hole torn in the sleeve from when she’d been repairing the engine.

Carrie bit her lip. It wasn’t as though it’d make any difference now, not as though she’d probably even get a chance to give it to her. But she started sewing anyway. Maybe Sue would appreciate it. Maybe she could pass it onto Chris if she decided to leave with her after all.

The regular motion helped calm her nerves and by the time the patch was attached to her satisfaction, she was ready to face the world. Not that she’d managed to pick up any leads using her senses, but hopefully this place had a library or a newspaper or something. The local sheriff might not have been able to stop these attacks, but they weren’t looking at it from the same angles she was.

Thankfully there was a library, and she started working through the archives of the last three months of the local newspaper. The first incident was Eddie Grant, 14 years old, who killed his parents by stabbing them over fifty times with a knife. The initial reactions had been shock that this had happened in their sleepy little town, followed by stories about how Eddie had been a Bad Seed, about how he’d been known to get into fights at school. This had been followed by an editorial questioning why the local teachers hadn’t picked up these Troubling Tendencies and maybe that there needed to be change at the Highest Levels.

The second was Amanda Kisren, 16 years old, who attacked several of her classmates during recess with a knife six weeks after Eddie. She managed to kill five people — including one teacher who’d tried to stop her — and seriously injure eleven more — including two more teachers — before finally being stopped. The celebrated hero of the hour was Dean Matthews, a member of the football team, who’d apparently managed to wrestle the knife out of her hand. His smiling face was on the front page of the paper that reported the attack, and Carrie found herself disliking something about the smug undertones of it, especially on a day when several people had died. But maybe she was being unfair, maybe it had been an old photo. Maybe she was just reading too much into whatever picture the paper had chosen to use.

It wasn’t as though he’d had any input into it. Probably.

The aftermath had been pretty much the same as for Eddie. Bad Seed, Never Quite Fit In, Troubling Tendencies. More speculation about Making Changes at the school. But also a sense of fearful anticipation about these knife murders: who would be next, both who would be killed, who would do the killing.

The sheriff announcing a curfew for everyone in school, regardless of the fact that it wouldn’t have stopped either killer. Something she should probably tell the other two, just in case it was still in effect.

Well, Sue anyway. Maybe ask her to pass it on to Chris if she was still in town.

Carrie pushed those thoughts away. So, knives, teenagers. Different years, but if Carrie was any example, maybe high school was just when powers awoke. Maybe there was a common thread between the two that Carrie just wasn’t seeing from these newspaper clippings; someone they had in common or might have areason to push both of them to act out on their rage.

Had whoever had done this hated these people just this much? Lashed out, pushing them to destruction both of themselves and others? Or was there something else about these people, something that made them vulnerable to these powers?

It was hardly as though kids at school needed that much excuse to lash out, even with violence.

Did whoever was behind this even know what they were doing? Maybe they just thought they were daydreaming or something and were as surprised as anyone else when their dreams came true.

But no, Carrie couldn’t believe that, not really. Not unless they were really young. A kindergartener, maybe younger. It wasn’t as though Carrie had ever been taught anything, and she’d always known when she was touching someone else’s mind, even if she hadn’t known what exactly was happening.

She’d always known.

Which meant that whoever was doing this, it was likely someone like her. Someone just like she had been, before Sue.

Before she could spiral too much, she checked their addresses, just to be sure. 13 and 56 Amsterdam Street. That couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Maybe it was someone in that area instead?

The third incident pushed her away from that line of thought though. Jessica Hughes, 31, high school teacher, who’d gone home almost two weeks ago and had hacked her husband apart. Looking at her address — 37, 1st Avenue — she’d lived half the town away. There was almost a sense of relief in the articles after this, as though they finally had a target they could blame. Rumours of trouble in the marriage, that maybe Jessica had been responsible for giving her students the idea of using knives to resolve their problems. Even, in the letters page, the idea that they might all have been part of some kind of satanic coven; that these killings had been part of a ritual.

Also, the principal of the high school was gone, for negligence, and the newspaper seemed to be in favour of getting rid of vice principal too, as soon as a replacement could be found.

And that had been it, at least so far. But the space between attacks had been decreasing, as if whoever was responsible was becoming more used to this, more proficient. If the pattern continued, they were about due for another one. The paper had moved onto other topics — the current big one being rumours about layoffs at a lumber mill — and there had been nothing that Carrie could sense, at least last night over the area of the town. She rubbed her eyes before returning the papers to the rack.

There was something she was missing. Probably a lot of things. She’d never been much good at schoolwork or with people, and this felt like the worst combination of both. If Sue was here, or even Chris…

But she wasn’t, they weren’t, and this had been her idea in the first place. She’d just have to handle this investigation herself. Be a good little Nancy Drew as Chris had scathingly put it.

Okay. So, the school. She consulted the town map, then made her own crude copy of the relevant streets so she could find her way there and back.

Crunching her way through the snow towards school — not her school, but still — left her with an unpleasant feeling. Like time was winding itself backwards, like she was all the way back in Chamberlain. Like she was marching her way back into a box, where there was a sign, a mark around her neck for all to see.

Like no matter how far they’d come, Carrie had never left Chamberlain at all.

Finally, eventually, the school sprawled unpleasantly before her, a squat concrete construction for the most part, with a few temporary buildings that had been thrown up to one side and now looked like they’d been there for several winters too long. Lights were on in them and even without extending her senses, Carrie could imagine the waves of cold emanating from them as students huddled and tried to remain warm whilst teachers talked at them.

She stamped her feet, trapped her fingers between her arms and her body and let herself feel all the knots of fears and hopes, want and anger in front of her.

Fear was definitely the strongest emotion, concentrated and bitter, like swallowing blood after being hit by a ball in gym. Of course everyone here was aware that another stabbing could happen at any moment.

But not if Carrie could stop it first.

Not that the fear stopped the day to day business of friendships, of lusts, of sin. Of cruelty. It definitely didn’t stop that. Maybe it made it worse, maybe not, but it was definitely different. Carrie could feel the bladed edge underlying everything without even trying.

She searched and searched, but couldn’t find anything, anyone, out of the ordinary. Sure, some people were feeling anticipation, even anticipation about another stabbing — can’t wait to find out which deserving asshole gets hit next, was one thought that curled around her with a vibrancy that lingered long after she’d moved on to the next unusual bundle of feelings — but nothing she could find that indicated any knowledge, any hint that anyone knew what was coming next.

Still no thoughts that sung out to her like her own.

Finally the last bell rang and students started filing out towards the freedom of the parking lot and the path outside. Nothing, she thought furiously, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Nothing.

It was the burning from the trail of tears sliding down her face that made her realise quite how cold she’d let herself become, that snapped her fully back inside her body. There was ice on her eyelashes, and her joints were aching and stiff when she creaked into motion. As she marched back to the motel room, her body was first numb and then started burning as she began to warm up, the wind cutting like a knife through her jacket.

Stupid, she told herself. So stupid. Just because she had powers now, it didn’t mean that her body was any more resistant to the weather, especially if she did something as idiotic as standing in the same place for who knew how long. By the time she got back, her body hurt all over, but at least she could still feel everything. She thought.

A warmish shower later and she was almost, almost feeling okay. Sue hadn’t gotten back yet, but maybe that was a good thing? She was probably out there earning money and they’d need every dime if… When they were done here.

After she’d towelled herself off, gotten dressed again and climbed into bed to wrap herself in the sheets, she sent out a probe, looking for her. Not prying, she told herself, but just in case.

Nothing.

That kind of thing happened, occasionally, for all that she knew Sue. Sometimes, when she didn’t know where she was, when she was a little further away… She opened herself up, cast her net wider, and…

Something! Not Sue, not Chris either, but a virtual beacon of pain and fear and pain and distress and pain. Something had happened, not at the school, nowhere near it, but something. Carrie might not have been able to feel it coming, but she could go over there and stop it now.

And if she was too late, maybe she could stop it happening again.


	8. Chris

Gabriel wasn’t much for talking on the drive over, but that was fine. Chris wasn’t feeling much like chatting either.

Someone with a knife.

She remembered when Carrie had let out a cry, brandishing a newspaper article at the rest of them as though she’d struck gold, found the secret of the universe or maybe just a way to eliminate the fear gnawing at the backs of all of their minds. Instead it’d just been a minor story in a national newspaper about a small town suffering from an apparently unconnected series of stabbings.

A scare story to make people in the big cities feel more complacent about the violence on their own doorsteps, her father would no doubt have cynically said. But Carrie had seen something else in it; a sign. She could have had a push from her freaky powers, for all Chris knew. And it hadn’t been like they’d had anywhere else to be, nowhere else they’d dared stay for too long.

So here they’d come, right into the lion’s den.

Good going, Chris, she told herself. Still not having a lick of sense when it came to danger.

Gabriel turned left through some ostentatious gates that practically screamed ‘look how important we are’ and finally pulled up in front of what was obviously intended to be a mansion. Certainly was by the standards of this town. It perched at the top of the highest hill in the town, overlooking everyone else disdainfully.

The kind of place her father would have been delighted for her to move into.

Probably less so with the current police presence, flashing lights illuminating the white facade. Gabriel turned to her. “Just stay in the car,” he said again. “It’s not going to be pretty in there.”

She didn’t tell him that she wasn’t exactly squeamish, could handle things not being pretty. It wasn’t as though he was actually asking for her input anyway. He took her silence as assent and climbed out of the car, thankfully leaving the engine and the heater running. He paused briefly by a doleful looking deputy in his mid thirties standing to one side of the steps in front of the entrance and gave him an awkward quick wave — but seemingly didn’t want to stop and chat — before carrying on inside.

Several minutes later the sheriff stomped out of the mansion and yelled at the deputy, so loudly that Chris could hear his words clearly without even cracking the window. Words like useless and mess up and spoiling evidence, losing the goddamn knife yet again. About how if Ms McCrae wanted to know how this nonsense went this long, he’d have no issue whatsoever pointing the finger of blame where it was deserved. All the time, the deputy huddled smaller and smaller, clenching his mouth shut, his fingers tightly clenched at his side, not offering a word in his defence.

Already knowing how useless it’d be, if Chris was any judge. It wasn’t as though she’d never been in the Sheriff’s position before, even if she’d never exactly been that crude. In the deputy’s too, though she was loath to admit it.

Finally an ambulance pulled up, lights flashing but no siren and — after waving a stern finger at the deputy — the sheriff led the paramedics inside. Shortly after that, two covered stretchers were taken out and put into the ambulance. Chris couldn’t help noting that one of the bodies moved under the covering as it was jostled in ways that… she didn’t think was possible. For something intact, at any rate.

What had happened in there? Had whoever done this really had time to carve someone up like that with a knife?

An image of Billy’s body, just before she had turned on the bleacher machinery, flashed in front of her eyes. How it had been intact, but boneless in ways that suggested that Carrie hadn’t needed to leave it that way.

Score another one for the psychic, she supposed.

Shortly after the ambulance left again, a young woman in good but dishevelled clothes slipped out the front entrance. With a few flares of yellow light in the dimness, she finally lit a cigarette, coughing a little as she took the first drag. Deputy Loser glanced hopefully at her a few times. When she continued to ignore him, staring blankly off into the darkness and taking the occasional puff on her cigarette, he shuffled over and started talking at her.

Chris felt an unexpected tug inside her. Whoever she was, she could look after herself. That was definitely what the Chris of Chamberlain would have thought, and Chris wasn’t so sure that she was wrong. Regardless of anything else, she’d be gone in a few days, and why risk bothering the local law? Even the apparent red headed step child.

On the other hand… Fuck it. Living here, dressed in those clothes, she couldn’t imagine that this woman didn’t have some local clout. Assuming she hadn’t just lost it in whatever had happened here.

Chris was out of the car, disobeying Gabriel’s instructions even before she’d finished that thought. “Hey,” she called over to the woman. “Got a smoke?” She gave Deputy Loser her best quelling look as she made her way over. To her relief, he seemed beaten down enough that he retreated to the other side of the grand entrance with his tail between his legs, his face flushed.

The woman tensed as Chris approached “Who are you?” the woman demanded. “Mind telling me why you just stepped out of the cop car?”

Chris paused, still about fifteen feet away, and wondered if she should just retreat, mission of mercy accomplished, at least for the moment. “Was going on a date with Gabriel,” she said. “He got a call to come here instead. I can go back and sit in the car if you’d prefer.”

The woman looked at her searchingly for a moment, before almost collapsing as the tension left her body. “On a date,” she murmured to herself, giggling a little. “I can’t believe Gabriel mustered up the nerve to pick up a pretty stranger passing through town.” In Chamberlain, Chris had no doubt she would have been out of his league. Here, she was just ruined enough that she could understand why he thought he’d have a chance. “Here,” the woman said, waving the pack in Chris’ direction. “Help yourself.”

Getting closer, the woman’s face had been washed clean recently, of makeup and everything else, and her damp hair was already freezing in the cold air. Face pale, pupils large, her hand shook as she tried to light the cigarette Chris had taken. Finally, Chris reached forwards and stabilised her hand. “Thanks,” the woman said, flashing her a brief, shaky smile.

The harsh taste filled Chris’ mouth and lungs before she breathed it away, resisting the urge to cough a little herself. The smell reminded unpleasantly her of Billy, of him driving through the darkness, cigarette in hand, occasionally having one herself just to fill the silence. This was her first one since Chamberlain, something she realised that she hadn’t missed at all.

“Thanks,” she said. “Anne.”

Another quick strained smile. “Jenny.” Jenny reached the end of her cigarette and dropped the butt, stamping it out. She hovered there, looking uncertain and young, like she was a freshman on the first day of high school. “I don’t want to go back in there yet,” she said in a small voice. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”

Chris, caught by her gaze, wished fervently that Sue was here to handle this. This was really not her area of expertise. Feeling awkward, she shook her head, taking another acrid puff, managing to avoid wrinkling her nose, using it as cover while she tried to think of something, anything, to say. “No?” she hazarded, shrugging. “Seems logical to me.”

“I just don’t understand how it happened,” Jenny whispered. “Dad had retired to his study after dinner. Then there was some shouting, then screams. By the time that I’d gotten there…” Tears started leaking down her face. “There was just that guy. One of Dad’s workers, I think And parts. And blood, so much blood.”

Sue would hug her, right? That was what someone should do in this situation? Chris sighed internally, feeling thankful once again that she was well out of Chamberlain — she’d never live this down. She tentatively offered an open arm to Jenny, who settled into her side, burying her face in Chris’ shoulder as harsh sobs racked her body.

Surely there was someone else who should be doing this for her.

“I don’t understand,” Jenny cried. “I should have seen someone going into the study. Someone should have seen. Someone must have let him in.” Which, okay, made it understandable why she was seeking comfort from a complete stranger. And maybe Chris could appreciate other reasons why someone might do so. If someone didn’t know you, was very likely to be just passing through, there was less danger in letting your guard down like this. If they were no longer around, it was far less likely they’d use such moments of weakness against you.

Maybe Jenny didn’t want any responses, maybe she just wanted a warm body to talk at, but… “Do you have anyone you can trust?”

Anyone Jenny could do this with apart from her.

Jenny pulled away from her, rubbing her eyes, and offered her a twisted smile. “No one that I trust. Especially not now I’ve probably inherited Dad’s business.” She shook her head. “And the mess with the mill. Guess I’ll be sleeping with a gun under my pillow.” She swallowed, looked away. “Maybe I’ll just get charged instead. Apparently they haven’t found the knife the guy carried, so I shot an unarmed man. Even if he was covered in my father’s blood.”

Christ. “You’ve phoned your lawyer?”

Jenny stared back at her blankly.

Laypeople. God. “Go,” she said, and started pushing her towards the front door. “Phone him. Now. You needed him here, like, half an hour ago.”

“But…” Jenny said, still not getting with the program.

“Seriously. It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do. This is a murder and you need your lawyer here, now.” Why hadn’t her father gone into this with her already? “My father’s one, and it was one lesson he drilled into me. When dealing with the police, you always, always get your lawyer.”

Especially if the situation was as tricky as Jenny had intimated.

Finally, Jenny turned around, started walking back towards the house. When she opened the door, Chris saw Gabriel standing watch over a few people dressed like servants. She ducked out of the way.

“Hey, I better leave you here,” she said. “I, uh, wasn’t supposed to get out of the car. And Gabriel might not be best pleased that I advised you to lawyer up. So, I guess I better go back.”

Jenny stopped and turned around. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll… I’ve got it from here, I guess.” She handed over the remains of the pack and the lighter. “Here, these were Dad’s. I’m… not sure what I was doing. You’ll probably get more use out of them than me.”

“Uh, thanks,” Chris said, taking them and privately resolving to throw the cigarettes out at the first opportunity. If nothing else, she’d discovered they really weren’t her thing any more.

Jenny waved at her awkwardly and, equally awkwardly Chris waved back, then turned to go back to Gabriel’s car. She met the gaze of Deputy Loser, then looked away again, acutely aware of how much trouble he could make for her. Aware of how she now couldn’t take her own advice, had no lawyer she could call on if things went bad.

Then again, from the way he was smirking, maybe he was happy for anything that’d make trouble for the sheriff.

She hoped. He didn’t stop her anyway.

She was almost back to the car when she saw a figure hanging around near the gates. Was that…?

Carrie. She shivered as the frisson of Carrie’s abilities travelled down her back.

Great. The spook squad had finally arrived.

Chris was sorely tempted to just get into the warmth and wait for Gabriel to get back, but with a groan her feet carried her past the car and onwards.

“Hi,” she said when she finally got within talking distance. “Fancy meeting you here,” she added flatly. She looked around, but Sue was nowhere to be found. Had she really let Carrie off her leash like that? To a crime scene?

For a moment, Carrie just stared at her, mouth slightly open before shaking her head. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

Chris shrugged, sharp, hard. “Deputy asked me out on a date.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sadly he had to make a quick pit stop first.” Before the look of surprise on Carrie’s face could turn into something else, she asked, “So, what have you managed to find out?”

Carrie glared past her, towards the mansion. “Nothing,” she said, as if it was a personal affront. “I mean, I can sense pain and fear, but no one that could be causing this.”

“I don’t think you’re going to be able to find anything from the person who did this. I think he was one of the people carried out of here on a stretcher. The more intact one, but still.”

Carrie’s scowl deepened. “Great. Just great. Someone did something right under my nose, and I’m still no closer to figuring out what’s happening.” Her shoulders slumped, her head dipped, her hair falling over her face. “I dunno. Maybe this just isn’t something I’m supposed to be doing. Maybe it’s just another thing I’m no good at.”

Chris successfully resisted the urge to reach forward and brush the hair out of her eyes. It was actually kind of infuriating that this was how she liked Carrie the most now, when she was being vulnerable like this instead of being angry or sulky. Where was the urge to tear her to shreds that she would have had just a short time ago, a lifetime ago? It was moments like this that made her question who she even was any more.

What the hell, Chris? She asked herself. What the actual hell?

Outwardly, the only sign she allowed herself to show was that she sighed and slumped a little herself. “Look, I’ve got an in with the sheriff’s department, right? Meet up with me tomorrow around six, and I’ll see what I can arrange. See what we can find out. There has to be something, right?”

Carrie looked up at her, hope and confusion warring in her features and again, infuriatingly, Chris felt something soft unfold within her. “You’d do that for me?”

Why was it so much easier to exist with her like this? Why did it feel simpler now than at any point, well, ever, but certainly since they’d been on the run?

Chris smirked at Carrie and gestured behind her. “Well, I might also be helping to save more lives. I’m not a complete bitch after all.”

To Chris’ surprise, Carrie managed to give her a creditable smirk back. “Not a complete bitch, no.”

Wow. Look at her after all.


	9. Sue

Sue eventually came to a halt in front of a tree a little way outside of town. Exactly why, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t as though it was particularly impressive or unusual in any way. Just that it seemed like not a bad place to stop for a while. To rest. To think. To be.

It had a dark hole in the trunk, leading to its heart, outlined by a smattering of white frost. There was a metaphor there, she was sure.

Fuck. And she’d spent enough time around Chris that she could at least think that word without flinching. Maybe the distance, the tree did help, because it was clear that the way things had been going hadn’t been working.

She needed to be less passive, she told herself. Less of a doormat. Take control of the situation, rather than waiting for the other two to escalate things. Honestly, looking back at everything since Chamberlain, it was obvious that she’d still been stuck as too much of her old self, too much of the get along girl, which really wasn’t needed when they were all on the run, unable to get away from each other. If nothing else, last night’s blow up had shown one thing.

Changes would have to be made.

She shivered, clomping her feet and rubbing her hands. Enough time here by the tree, for all its peace. Time to move on. On a whim, she didn’t quite head back the way she came, but off at an angle. She still hit town relatively quickly, travelling down unfamiliar streets with small, huddled wooden houses lining either side, looking like they welcomed the chance to hide themselves in what snow there was. Children playing outside here and there, even as night approached, made the place seem more lively; making snowmen, having snowball fights. 

A breeze whipped a fine powder of snow into her face. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, one house in particular caught her attention.

At first, she wasn’t quite sure why. It didn’t look that different to the houses around it. Same kind of build, similar kind of repair. Sure, the lights were still off as the sky dimmed, but it wasn’t the only house like that on the street. Then her eyes fell on the postbox, a 13 followed by Grant. Something about the name struck a chord.

Wasn’t that the surname of the first attacker?

Mustering her courage, she went up to the door and knocked. She’d rehearsed this in her mind on the drive over. Sure, she’d expected to have back up, but she could do this by herself.

She could.

There was no answer.

“That’s the murder house,” called a child’s voice from behind her. “You won’t get an answer there. They’re all dead.”

She turned around to see a girl, probably still just in her pre-teens, hands stuffed into gloves a size too large and a purple knitted scarf tied tightly around her neck. Threadbare clothes that had to be hand-me-downs that looked like they kept any heat in more through layering than anything else. “Oh?” she said, smiling at her. “What can you tell me about it?”

The girl looked at her doubtfully. “Why’d ya want to know?”

This, at least, Sue had prepared for. “I’m writing a story for college. I heard about the recent events, and thought it’d get me a good grade.”

“Oh, well, college,” the girl said disdainfully, as if it were some kind of foreign, fancy extravagance she couldn’t even hope to attain. “Well, if it’s for that, then you ought to be able to pay a bit for it.”

Sue winced and fished around for her purse, far lighter than she’d really like. “How about a dollar? Two if you give me something good.” She fished one bill out, holding it in front of her,

The girl eyed it, then looked back at her. “Ten dollars, at least, college girl.”

“Two,” she bargained, still more than she’d really like. “Three if you really deliver the goods.”

The girl looked back at her, gimlet-eyed, like a saleswoman assessing how much she might be able to get from a customer, then nodded her head. “Done.” She held out her hand.

Sue handed her one dollar bill. “The rest afterwards.”

For a moment, she thought she was going to get stiffed, that the kid was going to run off, prize money in hand. But instead she shrugged. “Nothing really to it. Eddie’s dad was always one for whupping his ass. Eddie musta got tired of it, went after him with that knife of his.”

Sue fiddled with her amulet, tugging it out from under the front of her top. “He had a knife? Was that usual?” she asked. Maybe it was all a local thing. Everyone carried a knife for whatever reason, so that was why the murderers all used one. Or maybe Eddie was behind all the other murders too, reaching out with his mind like Carrie could, using his favoured weapon.

The girl shrugged again. “Normal for Eddie, at least since the summer. Didn’t see him playing around with a knife before then. He went after Jimmy with it after Jimmy jumped in the pile of leaves Eddie’d just raked. Jimmy said that Eddie was breathing real hard, put the knife to his throat. Said that for a moment he thought that Eddie was just going to cut his neck like he was a pig for slaughter. Then he let him go, said that if he ever did that again, he’d come after Jimmy good and proper.” She smirked. “Jimmy likes to tell it as though he hardly turned a hair, but Missy says that he was crying and pissed himself, all down his front.”

“So Eddie was like that? Angry? Violent?”

“He used to be quiet, maybe a little intense, not really lash out angry. But then he went to high school, and well. That changes you, you know. Especially for boys,” the girl said in all seriousness, and Sue had to stifle a smile at that, before feeling the impulse fade.

She wasn’t wrong, even if Sue didn’t think that it was liable to make you start stabbing people, at least outside of big cities.

“Fine,” she said, handing over another dollar. 

The girl looked at her narrowly. “That ain’t worth three dollars?”

“Sorry,” Sue said. “You really think it was?”

The girl’s shoulders slumped. “Guess not. What about the Murder House? Word is that Mandy spent a night there and got sent mad by the ghosts. The next day she went and sliced up those kids at her high school.”

“What?” Sue said. “Is that true?”

“Yes?” the girl said, but she couldn’t meet Sue’s eyes.

Sue looked at her steadily.

“Dunno? Maybe?” She wrinkled her nose. “Honestly, Mandy was more the type to shove other kids in there and lock the door after them. What about if I take you to my brother, Scotty? Would that be worth another dollar? He goes to the high school. He knew some of the people who died.” She lowered her voice conspiratorially. “He said that there was so much blood there’s still a big dark patch in the yard where it happened.”

Sue swallowed. That much blood, running everywhere. Christ. “Sure. Do you think he’d be willing to talk to me?”

The girl gave her a scornful look. “The chance to impress a college girl? He’d be all over that.” Sucker, her tone clearly implied. “Well, as long as you don’t give him the idea there might be money in it. So I guess you’d better give me that dollar now.”

Sue sighed and handed over the additional dollar. The girl tucked it into her jacket and then scampered down the street. “Scotty? Scotty!”

One of a group of three boys talking to each other turned his head towards her, sighing. “What do you want, Jessica?” he said in a tone of world weary frustration at having to deal with younger siblings.

Jessica ignored his tone, bouncing up to him. “A college girl who’s doing a story on the murders wants to talk to you.”

The boys collectively flinched, their smiles falling away. They looked towards her, then back at each other. One started moving away, followed by the others.

“Come on,” Jessica taunted her brother. “You’re not going to be a coward about this, are you? In front of a reporter?”

Scotty stopped, then squared his shoulders and turned around. “Don’t know what you mean,” he said truculently. “Just got better things to be doing.”

“Sorry,” Sue said, finally catching up with them. “If you don’t want to — I’m just doing research for s story. I’m sorry if I’m bothering you.”

Scotty frowned, then shrugged. “Sure, I can talk to you. What do you want to know?”

Apparently satisfied that it was mission successful, Jessica winked unsubtly at Sue then bounced her way down the road, further in the direction of town. Probably off to spend some of the money Sue had just given her. Sue watched her go, then concentrated on Scotty. “Just some background, really. Jessica told me you knew Mandy? Maybe Eddie as well?”

His eyes darted away and he shrugged. “Wouldn’t say I knew either of them, really. Eddie’s a freshman, Mandy’s a junior.” He sneered. “Jessica just thinks I know everyone at high school just because I go there.”

Which, point. But still he might know more than Jessica did. “Is there anything you can tell me about either of them?”

He gave her a twisted smile. “Surprised you aren’t asking about Mrs Hughes as well.”

She gave out a laugh as well. “Honestly, I haven’t managed to do much in the way of local research yet. Haven’t even managed to hit the library. I was just out walking and recognised the name on the house and, well.”

He looked at her, unimpressed. “That’s what they teach you at college, huh?”

Sue tried on a sheepish smile. “Well, I’m still learning. I thought it’d be good practice, going to a new town, seeing how well I could land on my feet.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

Sue shrugged. “I guess it depends on what you’re willing to share with me?” She looked at him hopefully, using the expression that Chris said got disgustingly good results from strangers who really should know better.

It seemed to work on Scotty at least. “Sure, I guess. I dunno. Eddie always seemed quiet, never really got into trouble. Well, that was when we were both in middle school. By the time he got to high school, he was causing trouble. Hit some guys who tried to bully him first week. I heard he practically had to be peeled off them. Then, well. He went psycho and killed his parents.”

“Jessica mentioned he carried a knife?”

“Yeah, I heard. Must have started doing that after I left middle school.” He shrugged. “Guess he was getting up the nerve to go after his father. Can’t say I blame him. The entire street heard the whuppings some nights.”

“Just his father?”

“Far as I know. I mean, Papa Grant certainly knocked his wife around as well, but who knows what happened in that house really? That’s what I heard, anyway.”

“And the Murder House thing? Do you think that Mandy got possessed by the spirits of the Grant family?”

Scotty laughed. “Not from what I’ve heard. Not that I ever really talked with her, for all that she lived only a few houses down. Nah, what I heard is that she’s always been a grade A-” He halted suddenly before continuing. “Not a great person.”

“Oh?”

He snorted. “Yeah. Apparently, she was part of this whole clique thing and liked to shit on everyone she could. Until I heard she did something or pushed too far or whatever, and suddenly no one wanted to stand with her. Then, whoosh. Everyone she shit on was shitting on her instead. She got angrier and angrier, then…” He shrugged. “She got suspended for a few days for getting into a fight. When she came back…” He looked away. “She went after her former friends.”

Christ.

“There was blood everywhere,” he said tonelessly. “She… I didn’t realise that a knife could do that to people.”

Helplessly, Sue touched him on the shoulder, and he moved away from her.

He moved his mouth before clearing it and swallowing. “It’s nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, so, Mrs Hughes.” He shrugged. “Not much I can say about her. She was our English teacher. She liked poetry, I think? I dunno, she wasn’t the strictest, but she also wasn’t the worst. At least, not until a few weeks before she attacked her husband, where she started yelling at anyone who messed around in her class. Heard she hit someone in one of her classes with a ruler for talking. Then, wham.”

Sue tilted her head. “So, in all three cases, people got more irritable and angry before…” She waved a hand around in the air.

“Yeah,” Scotty said as if she was stating the obvious. “I mean, if you’re going to snap like that, there’s going to be signs before, right?

Sue guessed. But, more importantly, if there was something — someone — hinky going on, it pointed to a pushing over time rather than just someone taking control of something.

“Do you know if anyone might have had a grudge against all three of them?”

Scotty stared at her. “What, Eddie, Mandy and Mrs Hughes?” He shrugged. “Maybe, I guess. But I can’t think of anyone who would have known all of them apart from the other teachers. Why, you think that someone made them do this?” He leaned forward, suddenly engaged again. “Like, was maybe drugging them or something? You suspect one of the servers?”

Sue… hadn’t gotten that far, actually. But it was a thought. What if this wasn’t something quite so supernatural? A server holding a grudge was surely just as likely as something more weird.

But all knives? That was the thing that bothered her, that made it seem like something specific. That her mind kept on returning to. A knife, lashing out with rage. Could it be Eddie, reaching out from wherever he was, re-enacting what he’d done, again and again? Something within her felt almost… protective about the idea. He’d been dealt a shit hand. It couldn’t be good for him. He could be helped, surely. Carrie could help him.

She could help Carrie help him.

It was dark out now. Despite the urge to continue on, maybe look at the school next, she turned around, slipping the amulet back down underneath her top, now icy cold against her skin. She could investigate more tomorrow, after her shift.

Time to head back to the motel. Maybe see if she could start to repair things with Carrie. Chris too, if she was still around.

No, she had to be still around. Surely she wouldn’t have totally given up on them just yet. And even if she did, Carrie could find her again, couldn’t she?

Everything would be fine. They’d stop the killings and they’d all be together again.

Just like it was meant to be.


	10. Carrie

The drive back to the motel was quiet. Gabriel, Chris’ new boyfriend or whatever, was silent in the front, concentrating on the road, knuckles occasionally white against the wheel, mouth pursed whenever he looked in the mirror at them. Even without her powers, Carrie could tell that he hadn’t been pleased when he came out to find the both of them talking; it was in his quiet, controlled voice when he asked what ‘Anne’s’ friend was doing here. 

Carrie had heard that kind of tone before, had made herself as small and unnoticeable as she could. She didn’t know what Chris was doing with him, whether it was something serious or something done just because she was Chris, but she didn’t want to mess things up for her. Probably owed her that much.

Because of course she had no ulterior motives, she told herself bitterly. No reason to make sure that Chris had someone else apart from Sue.

Chris, who was currently seated next to Carrie in the back seat, rather than with Gabriel in the front. Why was she there, next to Carrie instead of with him, even if she was currently staring out of the window?

Why did Chris do anything? Even after all their time together, Carrie still couldn’t predict her, not really. Why would she flirt with guys when she had Sue? How could Sue not be enough for her? 

How could Sue not be enough for anyone?

Gabriel pulled up in the motel and Carrie slid out and started walking towards the room. Behind her, she heard Chris talk with Gabriel in a low voice, something about making it up to him tomorrow followed by the sounds of a kiss. Carrie made a face and opened the door of their motel room.

“Sue?” she called hopefully. And, oh god, the worry crashed back into her. What if Sue wasn’t back? What if something was interfering with her powers, and she still couldn’t find her?

What if, somehow, she’d been caught up in the violence tonight and she… and she…

“Carrie?” murmured Sue’s sleepy voice and all of Carrie’s worries evaporated in relief.

“Sue,” she repeated, rushing over to her and hugging her hard. “I was so worried about you.” She drew back and looked at her. “There’s been another attack, and I couldn’t find you.”

“I’ve been around town, or here. I managed to find a job. Maybe not the best paid, but it’s something. And I managed to find out some things about the previous attacks.”

“Me too. I hit the library during the day, but,” Carrie bit her lip. “Whatever’s happening here, I can’t feel it. I went to the high school, which seems to be the centre, but… nothing. No one like me that I could find. And I felt the fear and pain of the attack, but not whoever was behind it. I don’t understand,” she said, unable to stop her eyes spilling over with frustration. “I know what I feel like, and I really thought I’d be able to feel it in others. But nothing.”

“Calm down,” Sue said, reaching out and stroking Carrie’s hair. Carrie couldn’t help leaning into it for comfort, the tears on her face forgotten and drying. “Let’s share what we’ve both found out.” She grabbed a greasy bag laying on the bedside cabinet and handed it to her. “I managed to grab some leftovers from the diner, if you haven’t managed to eat yet.”

Carrie’s stomach informed her that she had indeed neglected it today, and she filled it with cold fried bread, strips of bacon and a couple of whole tomatoes whilst she listened to what Sue had to say. The kids she’d talked to, her theory that it might be a teacher or staff member, or it could be Eddie Grant somehow. “Maybe that’s why you didn’t feel anything at the school,” she said after Carrie told her about her doleful lack of success there. “He’s obviously being held somewhere else.”

Carrie filled in with what she had found out, both from the newspaper archive, and from the McCrae attack. “And that’s another good thing. Chris is helping me. God only knows why, though I’m not questioning it.”

“Oh,” Sue said, sounding surprised. “Oh, that is good.” But she didn’t sound completely certain and paused before continuing. “It might be best if I talked to her for now, though. I mean, not that I don’t trust you, but the two of you…” She lifted her hand away from Carrie’s head and waved in the air as though to demonstrate something, though exactly what Carrie wasn’t sure. 

Probably the fights between the two, Carrie decided dully. Not that she wasn’t right, but… “Sure,” she said. “You’ve always dealt better with her anyway.” Dealt better with people generally, really.

“Hey,” Sue said, starting up the stroking again. “Don’t worry. I’ll fix things with Chris. And you won’t need to worry about her anymore. I’ll protect you. Just… try to leave her alone. Don’t do anything to provoke her. And you can’t, can’t use your powers on her again.”

Carrie concentrated on the stroking, burying herself in the sensation. She could trust Sue. Sue had always been the bridge between them and maybe it was best that there was more separation between her and Chris. Certainly that was all she’d hoped for back in Chamberlain.

Even if…

It didn’t matter now. She’d trust Sue. She’d tell Chris tomorrow and trust Sue.

Even if Sue never did want her the way that she wanted Chris.


	11. Chris

“Hi,” Sue said.

Chris stiffened, stopping in her tracks as she walked away from the motel. She supposed she should have expected this, after making the mistake of talking with Carrie yesterday evening. She composed herself before turning around.

It hadn’t changed anything. She’d promised herself that before approaching Carrie.

“Hi.”

Sue offered her a smile. Part of Chris expected it to be tentative, but it wasn’t. Had Sue really changed that much when she hadn’t been looking? “Having a good morning?”

And, fine, two could play at that game. “Had better,” she said, giving a cocky smile of her own that edged distinctly into a leer, allowing her eyes to go up and down Sue’s body. It wasn’t hard — it really wasn’t hard, a sharp pang of loss running through her body — but Sue didn’t back off like she expected.

Instead, after a moment of chewing her lip, Sue matched her gaze. “Want to make it better then?”

What the hell? What? The? Hell? Sue sometimes — sometimes — initiated things between them, but being brazen outside, where anyone could see? Never. And she’d certainly never thought it would change now they’d — what, broken up? Assuming that they’d ever really been going out in the first place, as opposed to Chris just being a convenient receptacle for those of Sue’s passions she couldn’t focus on Carrie.

No. It was a trap, even if Chris couldn’t quite see the teeth just yet.

She didn’t let that show, though, just sharpened her grin. “Can’t right now. Have a job to get to. Earn a little spending cash before I blow this town. Feel free to meet me at the garage at lunch time if you still need a little sugar though.” She gave Sue a little wave, then turned around and started heading off again for the garage, moving at a faster pace this time, her heart pounding a little harder than she’d like.

There. That should put an end to that nonsense.

Shouldn’t it?

The town was buzzing as she made her way further in. The attack, and what it meant for the future of the mill. Whether Jenny McCrae would hold on and follow the advice of her father’s people, decide to do her own thing or just sell up and leave the place. Even a little about the murderer, who had apparently been about to be laid off. Or was possibly part of the union, taking revenge for the job cuts old man McCrae had been about to make.

Well, at least there wasn’t any talk about how Jenny’d been arrested for murder herself. Not that Chris had really been expecting someone at the top of the social scene to suffer that fate, but still. And not that she really cared, one way or the other.

When she got into the garage, Gilpatrick nodded at her, grunted and she took that as permission to get to work. He was quieter at least. Subdued.

If she was a better person — if she was Sue — she’d probably ask. Instead, she just bent over an engine, tried to figure out what was happening.

What had Sue been thinking approaching her like that this morning? Did she honestly expect Chris to come back, tail between her legs, just waiting for the next time Carrie lost her temper? Chris had been there before, and she wasn’t going to let it happen again, not when Sue was always looking first to Carrie, making sure she was fine every chance she got. And especially not now, when Chris had proof that she could make it on her own.

And, fuck, it wasn’t as though any spooky government agency would really be interested in her, except as how she could be used to get to Carrie. So, really, she’d be safer the further away she was from them.

She could even just stay here, assuming Carrie managed to get the crazy stabbings to stop. She could see the future unfold — getting a permanent job here with Gilpatrick, actually dating Gabriel for real. Maybe get married if she liked him enough, take over the garage when Gilpatrick retired.

She could actually make a life here, even if it was never one that she’d imagined. Far too traditional for a start, not nearly enough money for another.

If she wanted this, of course.

All of a sudden, the whole idea just seemed too much and she cleared her head, started focussing on cars and trucks again. God knew that they were simpler than people.

“Hello, stranger,” Gabriel said. There was something in his voice that she didn’t like.

Chris swore internally and glanced at her watch. Yes, it was lunchtime already. And at least there’d been no Sue.

Which was good, right? 

Still, she’d been kind of hoping that he wouldn’t show, even without whatever had crawled up his butt, regardless of what they’d agreed last night. It was all just a bit too much. She might only be in town a few days, but it felt a little suffocating.

But never mind that. The Law was here, and it had a problem.

She did her best to relax and turn around with a welcoming smile. “Hey, Gabriel. Guess I must have lost track of time.”

His jaw was tense, his eyes angry. Fuck. “So, get what you came here for last night?” he said in the tone of a man who felt like he’d been played for a fool. Which was, to be fair, a personal specialty of Chris’, back in her better days.

Play dumb, she decided. Let Gabriel himself spill what he knew or what he suspected. She ignored his tone, let her smile grow slightly suggestive. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, given that the job and Augusta” —she rolled her eyes, as much at Carrie’s alias as for the effect— “interrupted us last night before we could get anywhere good.”

Gabriel took a step forwards, all violence held in check and Chris flinched despite herself. “You know what I mean,” he said. “Word’s all over town that you and your friends are here to work on a story about the stabbings. That why you sucked up to me a couple of nights ago? Hoping to get an inside source?”

Well, she couldn’t exactly say he was wrong. On the other hand, if the grapevine in this town was all that… “You heard all that, but you haven’t heard that I had a blow out fight with Ellen and Augusta that first night here, to the point where I moved to another room? This story thing is all their baby. I’m just here because they needed someone to drive them” —she let her all too real bitterness at the truth of those words to colour her voice— “and I needed the money. That fight was because when they heard that I’d found a cute guy in uniform, they wanted me to see if I could worm something out of you about the stabbings, and I refused. And you’ll note I haven’t asked you a single thing.” She steeled herself to look him defiantly in the eyes.

To her relief, he folded, glancing away. “Sorry.” He ran a hand through his hair, ruining its immaculate style. “I just heard… Everyone’s riding my ass about this. Hell, even Gregg was giving me shit about it this morning.”

“Gregg?” she asked, grateful for any way to change the subject from her.

Gabriel closed his mouth, biting off what was obviously his immediate response. “Deputy Gregg,” he eventually said in a more measured tone. “You saw him at the house last night. He’s… He’s senior to me at the station.”

And if there wasn’t wealth of complexity underlying those simple words, Chris would eat her overalls. For a start, she couldn’t help but notice that Gabriel had been allowed into the house, while Gregg had been shouted at and stuck outside.

Still, she was well aware of what generally happened to outsiders who stuck their noses into a clique’s business. “Sorry I’ve been causing problems for you at work.”

He sighed. “It’s not you. It’s… Gregg’s been a bit pissy ever since Blackburn won the election and ousted his uncle, then brought me on board. Not to mention that he probably wanted to get his mind off...” He shook his head and changed the subject. “Want to go grab lunch?”

The thought of going to the diner, seeing Sue in that uniform, struck her like a blow. No. She wasn’t up for that. “I heard a rumour that you were going to show me your kitchen last night, before everything happened. We won’t have time for much, but I’m sure I could sort something out.”

He hesitated, then a slow grin spread over his face. “I think I could handle a little home cooked food,” he said.

“Guess I’ll have to see what you’ve got in the cupboard,” she said, smirking.

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

And, okay, this wasn’t something she’d have ever considered doing back in Chamberlain. Going back to the house of a deputy, let alone to cook him something. But, just at the moment, it felt like something she could control, with someone who might actually grow to like her. 

And maybe, for the moment, that could be enough.


	12. Sue

Sue felt like screaming as she walked towards the Pawn and Shake. She’d put herself out there, she’d tried to make things good, only for Chris to slap her away. It wasn’t fair, it was completely unfair, especially considering all the work Sue had done ever since Chamberlain to keep things running between them at all. And this was the thanks Chris gave her.

Really, what else could she expect?

No, she told herself. No. It wasn’t over yet. A setback, yes; failure, no. If nothing else, the fact that Chris turned up at the murder last night, the fact that she’d talked to Carrie, that she’d promised to help more… No, the window was not completely closed. She just had to find a way to lever it open again.

Even if the way she’d tried to use earlier had failed humiliatingly.

She huddled her arms around herself as she couldn’t help worrying — what if that was it? Maybe Chris had only ever stayed with them that long because she was interested in Sue’s body, and as soon as she found someone more physically appealing — even if Sue couldn’t see it herself in his overly styled hair — she left? Maybe that was what Carrie had seen in her mind, the spark that caused the fight. The fight not causing the split so much as providing a convenient excuse for it.

Not acceptable, she decided. It wasn’t right for Chris to leave them like this. And she was going to try and make Chris see that. And at least the investigation into the killings seemed to be going well, or at least progressing. It felt important, in a way that it hadn’t before they’d arrived in town. Connected too, like somehow solving this mystery — finding the heart of it — would also fix their relationship somehow. The temptation to get out there, to follow any threads she could find, was almost physical, an itch at the back of her mind. 

She forced it down. With everything, the one thing they needed to do was to be able to eat. So, first, work.

The talk in the diner this morning was all about the murder last night. The murder, and apparently Sue and the other two. Word had apparently spread about them and everyone seemed to have an opinion, most people eyeing her suspiciously, some wanting to add their two cents. She even got a few people offering to give an interview. Nothing useful as far as she could tell, but even so Sue was pleased that by the midday rush she’d somehow managed to only have one dollar docked when dealing with all this.

Clearly Mrs Finlay was in a good mood.

Lunchtime came and went, with no sign of Chris. Which was obviously fine. Anything that needed to be said clearly couldn’t be aired here, not when she was on the clock.

But that didn’t stop the itching to get out there and do something from getting worse.

Finally, after the lunch crowd, Sue managed to take a break, and immediately headed off towards the garage that Chris had somehow managed to get a job at. She paced around impatiently but couldn’t see her anywhere.

“Can I help you?” an older man in coveralls asked.

She forced herself to relax and use what Chris had sarcastically dubbed her small town-aw-shucks charm. “Hi,” she said, smiling. “I’m looking for…” she blanked briefly on the name Chris was using “Anne!” she finally remembered.

If the man noticed her slip, he didn’t show it. “I believe she’s taking lunch with Deputy Suarez,” he said. “She should be back- Oh, there she is.”

Sue turned around to see a truck pulling up, Chris and that guy from the diner seated inside. Sue’s stomach rolled unpleasantly as she couldn’t help noticing that Chris was looking a little mussed, like…

She realised that she was gripping her amulet so hard that her knuckles were white, and Chris was giving her an odd look. With an effort, she loosened her hand, popping the amulet back down beneath her top. She did her best to give Chris a natural looking smile.

“Hi,” she said. “I just wanted to check in with you, Anne. If you have a moment?” She said the last far more aggressively than she’d really meant to and, just for a moment, she wondered where the get along girl from high school had gone.

Not that useful when it came to riding herd over two fractious girls as it turned out, she decided. Besides, if Carrie and Chris got to be angry, didn’t she have that right too?

She did. She absolutely did.

Chris’ eyes slid uneasily towards the deputy, as if asking for permission, and that feeling inside Sue’s stomach intensified. He didn’t look happy, but shrugged. “I better get off to work,” he said, daring to kiss Chris in front of her before getting back into the truck.

And it wasn’t as though she didn’t know that Chris flirted with people other than her, kissed them, maybe even did more with them. Sue had never really minded, never had the inclination before to be jealous, even if she’d felt that she’d had the right. But something flickered inside her at this display, at Chris basically flaunting her… her boy toy in front of her, especially when things were so difficult between them.

Chris stared after him as he drove away, giving him a cute little wave as he turned the corner — which was so fake Sue almost gagged — before finally turning back towards her.

“Okay,” Chris said, sounding resigned and, if she didn’t manage penitence, she at least seemed unable to look Sue in the eyes. “Let’s go talk.” She led them to the alley behind the garage where fewer prying eyes could see.

“What are you thinking?” Sue exploded once they’d come to a halt. “Him?” She gestured off in the direction that the deputy had left in. “Are you looking to be knocked around again?”

That, at least, got Chris’ attention. Flames licked behind her eyes, a sneer etching itself across her face. “Wow, Sue. Didn’t think that you had that kind of dirty fighting in you. What’s next, are you going to slash my tires if I don’t come crawling back to you?”

In the heat of the moment, Sue had to admit the idea had a certain temptation. Why did Chris have to make looking after her so difficult? “Maybe if I thought you had the judgement to avoid another Billy, I wouldn’t be so worried. Don’t think I missed the fact that you’re already asking permission from him to just talk to me.”

“Maybe if you hadn’t been so obvious in your Nancy Drew act then he wouldn’t have been pissed thinking I was just using him,” she snapped, glaring at Sue defiantly.

Were you? Sue couldn’t help thinking sceptically. It would hardly be off brand. But saying that now wouldn’t help anything. Allowing how… worn down she felt by the continual bickering between Carrie and Chris to affect her wouldn’t help anything. She took a deep breath, let it hiss out from between her teeth, calming herself down. She cautiously reached towards Chris’ hand. Chris flinched slightly away before allowing Sue to take it. “Hey,” she said. “I’m just worried about you. And I don’t like the feel I get from this deputy.” She felt Chris’ hand relax under hers and, although Chris certainly wasn’t looking soft, there was a hint of vulnerability in her eyes that couldn’t help warming Sue, just a little. There was still hope for them. “There’s always a place for you with us, Chris.” As long as she learned to behave, and Sue had full confidence that she could.

Chris looked away again, but it didn’t feel so hostile this time. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.” She pulled her hand away. “But right now, I’ve got a job to get back to.”

And, looking at her watch, so did Sue. But as she returned to the Pawn and Shake, she couldn’t help humming to herself. Things were going to work out. For the first time since the blow up in the motel room, Sue was certain of it.


	13. Chris

Gary was even quieter that afternoon than he had been in the morning, seemingly sunk in thought, occasionally staring into the distance before getting back to whatever he was doing.

Chris… Chris was still feeling too knocked off balance after Sue’s visit to pay too much attention to his shit. How dare Sue say that to her? How dare she intimate that she couldn’t handle herself in a relationship just because one had gone sour? Little Miss Priss had only ever gone out with one guy unless holding hands and chaste kisses counted, which Chris was very much of the opinion that it didn’t. Knowing her, she’d hardly been able to go down on Tommy without feeling the need to pray afterwards, so what the hell did she know?

What the hell did she know?

So what if Gabriel had needed a little extra convincing that she didn’t have any ulterior motives? That was just the way guys were. Just the way girls were too, if their little unstable situation was any guide. Sue might think that she was managing the two of them oh so subtly, but she’d apparently missed the way Chris had been managing her as well. Not that Chris’d really liked to think that way when they had been… whatever they’d been, but facts were facts.

Even if it was seductively easy to think of accepting Sue’s overtures, burying herself back in that situation. Somehow Sue and even Carrie had worked their way inside her, a friendship that she’d never have even thought possible back in Chamberlain. And maybe Carrie hurting her like that was a one off. But no.

It didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter.

It didn’t matter.

She wasn’t going to let Carrie be another Billy, wasn’t going to let Sue be… someone who enabled her. She might help Carrie with her little investigation, but that wasn’t about them, wasn’t about her. At the end of the day, she’d go back to her own motel room, alone, and at the end of all this, when they’d figured out what was going on or thrown in the towel entirely, she’d never have to see them again at all.

And she’d be fine. She would. Regardless of what Sue might think, she was the best at taking care of herself.

She clocked out a little earlier today than she had yesterday, getting ready to meet Carrie and give her the bad news that she couldn’t help after all. As Gary counted out the bills, he paused and looked at her properly for the first time all afternoon.

“Nice necklace your friend had,” he said.

“Uh, yes?” She guessed. Well, actually she thought it had been rather cheap and tacky, but Sue had certainly been unashamed to wear it and there was no percentage in letting the guy who was about to hand her money know her actual opinion.

“Had it long, has she?”

She gave him a funny look, but inwardly the wheels were spinning. Her first instinct was to lie, to say yes, she’d had it ages, to deflect any possible trouble away from Sue. Away from her as well, since she’d be doubtless tarred with the same brush. But…

“She must have picked it up in town,” she said carelessly. “I’m sure I would remember it if she’d had it before.” That was certainly true.

He nodded and handed her the bills. As before, there was a little more than she’d agreed to. Not that she was complaining.

“Why did you want to know?” she couldn’t help asking after it was clear that he wasn’t going to elaborate further.

He looked away again. “It looks like one that my sister used to own, way back when.” His lips thinned. “Given to her by the piece of shit that married her. Figures something like it would turn up now.” He shook his head. “Or maybe I’m just seeing things that aren’t there, what with all the recent doings.”

There was a tight knot inside her stomach. “What do you mean?”

He turned to face her, a tight smile on his face. “After he’d sucked all the life out of her over years of marriage, the fucker up and stabbed her to death almost ten years ago. Went off into the woods to freeze to death. Didn’t find him for weeks. They never did find her necklace. And… yeah. Ill omen that it turned up now.”

“Yeah,” Chris said. It couldn’t have anything to do with what was going on now. Powers didn’t work like that, did they? “Christ, the kids,” she said, in what was hopefully a suitably sympathetic voice.

“Thankfully Richie managed to get out of there before that bastard managed to get him too, but… Well, I don’t exactly blame him for leaving town as soon as he found a decent job elsewhere. I did what I could, but he didn’t have a lot of happy memories left in this town after that.”

So, probably not him. And probably not a link at all, just a really unfortunate coincidence. After all, the murders had started up long before they’d arrived in town. And it wasn’t as though Sue seemed stab happy in any way apart from the metaphorical. 

It was probably nothing.

But, just in case, she’d suggest the others look into it, see if there was a similar rash of killings ten years ago.

She nodded to Gary, took her money and went to wait for Carrie outside.


	14. Carrie

Carrie crept towards Chris’ place of work cautiously, Sue’s words from the night before echoing through her head. That she shouldn’t talk to Chris, that only Sue could make things better. But she had to at least turn up, tell Chris that, otherwise she’d probably only make things worse.

There Chris was, propped insouciantly up against the wall, looking bored, and all of Carrie’s old insecurities reared their ugly heads. She didn’t know what she’d thought she could do, coming here. She might have powers, but they hadn’t been of any use since she’d come to town, and with anything talky, she’d surely just freeze.

She opened her mouth to try and explain this, but Chris got there first. “So,” she said. “I know I said I would try and help you, but apparently Ellen” —she infused the name with withering sarcasm— “has decided to spread around town that you’re here to investigate the killings, so Gabriel understandably thought I was just using him.” She made an unhappy flat expression with her mouth. “So I’m not sure what I can do.”

Carrie chewed on her lip as she tried to parse what Chris was undoubtedly trying to tell her, but she just wasn’t sure what exactly that was. “Sorry,” she tried as she extended her mind, hoping desperately that this was the right thing to do, that Chris wouldn’t hate her more for doing this even though she was deliberately disobeying Sue’s order to never use her powers on Chris again. _Hello?_ she hesitantly placed into Chris’ head, ready to retreat both physically and mentally if Chris showed the slightest problem with the intrusion, doing her best to only read thoughts that Chris was deliberately thinking.

Just like she’d practised with Sue in motel rooms across the country, while Chris had been doing whatever she’d wanted in an evening..

_I guess this works as well_ , Chris thought sardonically. _Lean up against the wall next to me. Keep on looking hangdog like that and hopefully no one will question why we’re not talking. At least for a while. Gossip here seems to spread even faster than in Chamberlain._ She sounded sour.

_You don’t mind me doing this to you?_

_Don’t mind is a strong term. But as long you get out when I tell you to, and don’t look at anything you shouldn’t._ Chris sighed mentally. _It’s a better solution than I’d managed to come up with, she added begrudgingly. And it’s not like I can keep you out anyway._

Carrie couldn’t help thinking that didn’t sound like a yes, not really. It was more like something she might have said back at school. Something that was better than the alternatives, but not good. _You sure? I could just go and leave you be, if you wanted._

_Well now you’re here you might as well hear what I have to say, so to speak. Honestly, it’s a little surprising that you’d deign to let me into the little club you’d actually talk to like this._ A thick knot of yellow sarcasm pulsed before fading. _I didn’t want to mention this where anyone could hear — especially not my employer — but apparently Gary Gilpatrick’s sister was stabbed to death around ten years ago, although I’m not sure if there were any other killings around that time. But maybe this isn’t the first time whatever this is has struck?_

_Maybe._ Carrie poked the inside of her mouth with her tongue thoughtfully. _You’d have thought someone might have said something if that’d been the case though._

_Maybe we just haven’t been asking the right questions._ A double edged blade surprisingly aimed as much at herself as at Carrie.

_I’ll hit the library tomorrow, see what I can find out._

_Sounds fun. I don’t think my contact in the Sheriff’s office is going to pan out, though. Like I said, Gabriel was not pleased at the thought I was Nancy Drewing it up with the rest of you._

_Oh. Well, thanks for the thought._ Carrie slumped a little further against the wall if that was possible. _Sue said I shouldn’t come_ , slipped out without her quite meaning to think it.

There was a pause before a thought cautiously wormed its way from Chris. _Have you noticed anything wrong with her?_

_No!_ Carrie snapped mentally, before feeling immediately apologetic again. _Sorry. She’s fine, just…_ She flailed around for the right word. _She’s just tired and stressed from the fight._

_Why are you so apologetic?_ Chris thought wryly. _I was the bitch who provoked you, after all. I’m sure that Sue would say that it was my own fault if I got knocked around._ Her words were tangled with an ugly hurting darkness that Carrie flinched away from.

_She wouldn’t!_ Carrie said. Sue was too kind, too wonderful, to ever think that about someone, especially not Chris. _I— I shouldn’t have done that to you. I’m sorry._

_And I shouldn’t have said that to you. Any of the things I said to you back in Chamberlain. Ugh_ , A complex knotty maze of a thought, with more twists and turns than Carrie could easily follow. _I can’t believe I just apologised to you._

_So?_ Carrie dared to hope. _Are we..?_

_I’m still leaving_ , she thought definitely, _You hurt me. I can’t… I won’t let that happen to me again. No matter what Sue thinks_ , Chris added bitterly.

_I see_ , Carrie thought.

More acid yellow. _No you don’t, otherwise you wouldn’t be that understanding. I mean, let’s take us, the other direction. I’ve apologised for being shitty to you. Does that actually make you feel any better? Do you honestly believe that I’m never going to hurt you like that again? Heart of hearts, honest to god truth, do you really see me as anything other than the vicious girl who took a dump on you, year after year?_

Carrie took a breath, tried to calm herself. Tried to persuade herself, like she’d had to do again and again every since they’d left Chamberlain, that things were different now. _Yes_ , she said, and it was true, kind of. Since living with her, seeing her in all kinds of disarray, it was very different to seeing her as a distant, perfect malicious goddess, who only occasionally sneered at her from on high. _Yes_ , she thought again, more certainly.

_Well you shouldn’t._ Chris’ thought was final, implacable. _If I were you, I’d never forgive me._

And that would doubtless be fine for Chris, who had the choice not to be surrounded by people who’d hurt her, disappointed her. Carrie didn’t have that option, had never had that option. Even Sue, almost a shining angel in that regard...

Maybe even her patience had run its limit, now that she’d apparently driven Chris away permanently.

Maybe Sue would leave with Chris, given she liked her more anyway.

Chris snorted out loud. _Is that what you think?_ and Carrie realised that she must have thought that louder than she’d intended.

_Maybe._

Chris snorted again, mentally this time. _She might have sex with me, but she actually likes you._ A sensation of acid burning inwards.

Carrie flinched away from that thought. Sue wasn’t, couldn’t be, like that. That just wasn’t the way Sue was built, Carrie would swear it. She reached out for Sue’s mind instinctively and again failed to find it.

It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t.

_Speaking of which, have you sensed anything odd about her new necklace?_ Chris asked.

Carrie couldn’t help aiming an odd look before remembering herself and looking at the ground again. _It’s an object. Why?_

Chris gave a mental shrug. _Apparently it’s similar to one Gilpatrick’s sister had. It’s probably nothing, but…_ An open invitation, for Carrie to make her own map.

She couldn’t find it in herself to reply, couldn’t bear to let Chris of all people know that she was even more useless than she no doubt thought, that her powers hadn’t been working consistently ever since they’d gotten to town.

Her powers. Huh.

I _’ve got a thought about how we could approach Gabriel_ , she thought cautiously. I _t probably needs some work, though._

Chris gave her a sideline look. _Tell me more_ , she thought with a sharp sceptical odor, but with the moonlight of guarded interest.

Finally, she had something useful to focus on. Even if she hadn’t done what she’d promised herself she would do, hadn’t broken off contact with Chris before she could mess things up further. Might in fact be starting something new with her. But surely, hopefully, it couldn’t go too badly wrong if Chris was onboard.


	15. Chris

The station was smaller and more decrepit than the one in Chamberlain, seemingly relying mostly on a couple of pillar-like paraffin heaters for relief from the bitter cold outside. Gabriel looked up as they entered, the expression on his face flashing through inquiry to welcome and then suspicion before finally coming to rest on reserve. His chair squeaked loudly as he rose to his feet.

He gave a quick, almost involuntary glance towards Gregg before going over to the open door to the Sheriff’s office and giving it a quick knock.

“Mind if I take a quick five minute break?”

“Sure,” the Sheriff said. “You’re about due for one, anyway.”

“Thanks.” Gabriel gave him a quick raise of his hand before starting to make his way over to Chris.

Gregg sneered a little at him. “Don’t you have enough work to do without skipping just to play footsie with your girlfriend there? Assuming she’s here for any other reason than because she wants a little more dirt.”

Gabriel flushed, his mouth thinning and Chris couldn’t help her stomach dropping, just a little. She couldn’t imagine he’d be in a good mood after that.

“Gregg, why the hell don’t you focus on getting your own damn job done and let Suarez stretch his legs for a few minutes,” came a roar from the office. “Who knows, maybe you’ll manage to make a few less fuckups in the process.”

Gregg reddened at the sheriff’s tone and he leapt angrily to his feet, his right hand clenching and unclenching by his side. He didn’t say anything though, eventually just slumping back down in his chair again. Gabriel used the distraction to get to his feet and get out of there, grabbing Chris by the wrist as he did so.

Gabriel wasn’t Billy, Chris told herself. He wasn’t Billy. It was just… He was pissed and, well, understandably so. She missed the days when she would have felt safe enough to provoke him for laying a hand on her, even if it would have been intensely counterproductive.

She could feel Carrie tensing beside her as Gabriel led them to his car and she reached blindly for her, hoping that she managed to convey that she should keep calm, not do anything.

“So,” he said after they were all seated in his car and he’d turned the heating on. “I thought your story was that you were on the outs with the girls you had driven from college.”

Chris made her mouth form a flat unhappy line. “I was. I kind of still am. It’s just…” Okay, she was committed now. “Augusta here has a gift, and she thinks there’s something unnatural about the killings in this town.”

Gabriel stared at her for a moment, before letting out a bitter laugh. “That’s your story now? I thought you were college girls out for a story to get a good grade.”

Chris rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, that’s the story I was told too, apparently because they thought I might not believe the real deal. Go figure. But I happen to flirt with a cute deputy and suddenly it’s all ‘We need your help, Anne’ and ‘There’s something else going on here, Anne.’ And, well, after speaking with Jenny last night, I thought any help they might be able to give you could only be a good thing. You’ve got to admit that there’s something fishy going on, what with four apparently unconnected people going stab happy in the last few months.”

Gabriel turned around so he could give Carrie a sceptical look. “Have you got anything to back this up, apart from funny feelings and tea leaves?”

Carrie hunched in the back seat, and for a moment it was like she was back in high school, hoping for nothing so much as to be ignored by everyone around her. Then she looked up at Chris, her watery eyes hardening, becoming more confident, and Chris couldn’t help wondering with a chill if she was reading Chris’ mind. Go on, she tried to think. You guessed that it’d probably come to this. Do it or don’t. It’s up to you at this point.

“Yeah, I’ve got more than funny feelings and tea leaves,” Carrie said. The radio crackled and when Gabriel glanced back towards it, his eyes widened as he saw the receiver floating in mid air before hooking itself back next to the set.

Gabriel swallowed. “That’s...” He swallowed again. “That’s a nice party trick, but we know that nothing like that happened with these cases. No one floated knives into people. We’ve got witnesses for some of these murders, and most of the culprits confessed.”

Carrie’s lips compressed but Chris dived in before she could say anything. “There’s apparently more kinds of weirdness than just that, and she thinks she might be able to get some idea of what’s going on if she pokes around a little more?” She deliberately tilted the end of the sentence upwards, making it a question. It… She couldn’t appear too certain of this, she was on thin enough ice with Gabriel as it was. “And I thought… if she figured something out and told you, it might help you if you could bring these murders to a stop?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “Okay, tell me what you want from me, and I’ll think about it. Nothing illegal but… Well, these are pretty much all open and shut cases, so Blackburn probably won’t yell at me too much as long as no one makes waves. Which means nothing to do with the McCrae case, you hear?”

Chris went slightly limp with relief. She’d hoped that appealing to his ambition might work even if appealing to the slightly haunted air he’d had last night didn’t, but she hadn’t been sure. “We heard that this might have happened before?”

Gabriel stared at her with a furrowed brow. “What, murders around here? Not for years and years if you don’t count anything that wasn’t a drunken accident.”

“What about Gary Gilpatrick’s sister?”

He looked into the distance. “Yeah, that would probably have been the last. But that would have been…” He counted on his fingers. “What, nine years ago?”

“Apparently she was stabbed as well?”

“I… guess? Honestly, I was in high school when that happened, and I didn’t really pay that much attention to the particulars. I can look up the details if you want.”

“If you wouldn’t mind. Do you know if there were any other deaths around then?”

He shook his head. “No murders, definitely.”

Huh. Maybe it was nothing more than a coincidence.

“Could we talk to Eddie Grant?” Carrie asked. “He seems to have been the first, at least recently. I’m hoping that I might be able to learn something from him.”

“I’ll see,” Gabriel said, tapping his fingers on his leg. “No promises — he’s in a correctional facility elsewhere in the state — but I’ll see. It’ll be a drive if so. Do you want me to see if you can talk with Amanda Kisren as well while you’re there?”

Chris exchanged a look with Carrie, who shrugged. “Sure,” Carrie said. “It’ll be good to see if there’s anything that strikes me as the same, if nothing springs out at me from Eddie immediately.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. I’ll see if I can drive you. Not that I don’t trust you, but…” He smiled thinly.

But he didn’t trust them. Chris, specifically. 

Not that she could exactly blame him, but a chill went down her spine nonetheless, even with the car heater taking the edge off the cold air.

He’s not Billy, she told herself, again. It didn’t help.


	16. Sue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm adding dubious consent to the fic tags for this chapter because Carrie and Sue have sex in this chapter and, well, there is definitely something weird happening with Sue, isn't there? This wasn't actually something that happened in the initial version of the fic, nor even when I started posting it, but with the emphasis on the different relationships Sue has with Chris and Carrie, the things that each want from her, it unfortunately made sense. If anyone wants to skip that part of the chapter, it starts shortly after Sue gets back to the motel room.

By the time her shift had ended, the itching to go out, to follow the trail of… whatever it was that was doing this, causing the killings, had become almost a burning that she could no longer deny. It even consumed the urge to go back, to see how Carrie was doing, to check on Chris and see if she’d come to her senses.

They were important — of course they were — but, but… finding this was the reason they’d come here. It was the key to making everything better. She just about managed to go back to the kitchen, have a friendly word or two with Sara and Mike before she had to duck out. She couldn’t help feeling a little bad that she pretty much had to cut Mike off mid-ramble, but...

From Amsterdam Street to the high school to 1st Avenue to a house on Scotway Street to the McCrae mansion on the hill, the snow had started gently falling again, the cold piercing straight through her, her hand continually tangling itself around her amulet. The only thing that kept her warm was her burning purpose.

But it was all to no avail.

She walked down the hill from the McCrae house but, somehow, she’d lost the thread she’d been following, and she wandered streets pretty much at random, hoping desperately for something that felt right.

She didn’t know where to go.

She didn’t know where to go.

She didn’t know where to go.

Finally, looking at her watch, she realised with a shock it was past midnight. Somehow, she didn’t feel tired or even that cold, but she also didn’t seem to be getting anywhere and doubtless Carrie was worrying about her. When she finally arrived back at the motel, Carrie was sprawled over the bed, still fully clothed, like she’d been waiting up for her, and her heart melted.

“Hey,” she said, stroking the side of Carrie’s face.

Carrie’s eyes slowly blinked open. “Hi,” she croaked. ‘You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Sue confirmed. “Now let’s get you undressed before you go back to sleep, and I hope you had something to eat.” She really hoped that Carrie had. The extras she’d taken from the diner were doubtless a solid block of ice.

“Yeah,” Carrie murmured. “I— Yeah, I had something to eat.” She blinked again, her eyes slowly focusing. “Where were you?” she asked anxiously. “I couldn’t find you.”

“I was out following some leads,” Sue said, gritting her teeth at the reminder. “It didn’t pan out,” she added shortly, tugging Carrie’s sweater over her head.

“Are you alright?” Carrie asked, voice slightly muffled.

“I’m fine,” Sue reassured as she finished pulling Carrie’s sweater off. “Let’s just worry about you. Did you have a good day?”

Carrie glanced down towards her amulet before looking away. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure. Just, you know.” 

Sue gave her a hard look. “I know what?”

Carrie huddled down beneath the covers and muttered something.

Sue could only think of one subject that would cause this response right at the moment. “Did something happen with Chris? After I specifically asked you to leave her alone so you didn’t mess anything up with her?” Irritation bloomed inside her. She made one request of Carrie, so simple even she shouldn’t be able to mess it up, and yet…

“It went well?” Carrie said, then repeated the words with more certainty. “It went well. We have a few new leads regarding the murders. We might even get to see Eddie Grant.” She looked up at Sue anxiously, as though waiting for approval.

Sue relaxed a little. Any news was good news, especially after she’d struck out today. “Tell me more.” 

Carrie filled her in what she’d managed to accomplish and, honestly, it wasn’t so bad. Even if Sue did suspect that Carrie was being unduly optimistic about how well she’d gotten on with Chris, it wasn’t such a bad thing that Carrie seemed to have softened towards her. Who knew how long it’d last though, especially if Sue wasn’t there to moderate things.

But still…

“Well done,” she purred, ducking down and kissing Carrie deeply. Carrie spasmed a little before kissing her back, her arms wrapping around Sue’s back. As the familiar heat built within Sue’s body, a niggling idea took form.

It still felt wrong, to even think of touching Carrie this way. She was still so innocent, not like Chris at all. But still. Sue knew Carrie wanted her to go further, to Do the kinds of Things that Sue did to Chris, that Chris did to her. It was… It was…

Surely Carrie deserved something, for staying with Sue, keeping the faith.

Unlike Chris, who’d rejected her. Left her. Abandoned her.

She ran a hand down Carrie’s side, all the way to her waist, felt her shiver, her skin goosebump. Then she slowly started moving it up her front, approaching There.

She drew back, so she could study Carrie’s face. Her mouth was slack, her expression slightly confused, eyes a little blown.

“Do you want this?” Sue asked, continuing to drift her hand slowly upwards.

Carrie looked blank. Sue tickled a finger just beneath her… Curves, and Carrie’s expression cleared. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes.” She got a hesitant look in her eyes. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Sue said, diving back in to kiss the question away, trying to bury the voice within her own head that was asking the same thing. Carrie’s skin was feather soft under her fingertips as she moved her hand upwards until it pebbled hard and Carrie was gasping into her kiss.

It was… It was nothing like she’d imagined, either when she’s been pressed up against Carrie’s body in the night or in the half remembered dreams she’d sometimes woken up with in the morning. It felt clumsy, like Sue was constantly on tenterhooks around her, like she’d never felt around Chris for all of her faults. Carrie twitched away when Sue scratched her fingernails down her back, was so dry Down There for such a long time that Sue worried that Carrie didn’t want to do this after all if she hadn’t said yes every time Sue asked. And, well, Carrie didn’t really seem to have a good idea of what worked for Sue, either.

There were a few moments that Sue just felt like throwing her hands up in the air and just giving it up as a bad job, maybe trying another night. And she might have even done that if Carrie hadn’t looked so fragile every time Sue slowed down.

Still, eventually Sue had Carrie laid on her back, fingers deep inside her. Carrie was red cheeked and gasping, eyes almost completely black, looking so pretty that Sue almost couldn’t believe that she had her all to herself.

Mine, she thought. Mine.

“Say you’ll come back to me,” she found herself saying as she brought Carrie closer and closer to the edge. “Say you’ll always come back to me.”

Carrie looked at her wildly, eyes almost unseeing.

“Say it,” Sue urged again.

Carrie worked her mouth wordlessly for a few seconds before she managed, “Always. I’ll always come back to you.”

Sue felt like she could almost eat Carrie up, just by looking at her. “Say you’re mine.”

This time, so close to pleasure, her back almost arching off the bed, Carrie didn’t take much coaxing. “I’m yours,” she gasped and Sue felt something clench inside of her.

“Good girl,” she murmured, bending down and taking her mouth as she worked spasm after spasm out of Carrie.

Afterwards, looking at Carrie’s sweat dampened hair as she gently snored next to her, she made a decision. No matter what Carrie and Chris learned tomorrow, if they had to travel out of town, it would only provide more clues at best. Whatever was causing all this, it was far closer than that. 

Sue just knew that somehow, could already feel the prickling that had started up again, tugging her from this bed, this room.

She’d find it, whatever it was, make it all better. And Carrie at least knew her place, would always return, no matter what else.

And Chris? Sue supposed she’d just have to see.


	17. Carrie

“I looked into Sharon Blythe’s murder,” Gabriel said as Carrie slipped into the back seat of his truck. Chris was already there, sitting in the front seat, separated from her by foam and fabric and metal.

“Oh?” Chris said, her voice fakely sweet, looking at him with wide eyes, as if she was hanging off his every word.

Carrie hated it, hated the way that she seemed to make herself smaller around him, filing off her edges, her blades, everything that made her Chris. For all that Carrie sometimes hated that part of her, for all that it sometimes sent her all the way back to high school, for better or worse, she couldn’t imagine Chris without it either.

Or maybe she just hated everything this morning.

Gabriel had a different reaction to it, of course, a cocky smirk crossing his face. “Yeah. Late night searching through files, but I found the report.” He held his hand in the air. “Some similarities, some differences. Like the others, he had a reason. His repair business had turned sour, and he’d started to drink, which set things into a spiral and by the time of the killings, he was in debt and unable to pay his taxes. He’d told his drinking buddies that he didn’t know how Sharon and his son would manage without him, that he’d have to make sure they were taken care of.” Gabriel shook his head. “But the thing that really stuck out to me was that we never recovered the knife there either.” He cursed. “You can’t share that with anyone, whether you’re writing a story or not. Blackburn will have my guts if he finds out that I’ve been sharing confidential information about the case.” 

He waited until both Chris and Carrie had nodded before continuing. “I’m not really sure anyone tried too hard to find anything nine years ago anyway. Sheriff Gregg… well, there’s a reason he was finally kicked out a few years ago. And on the other hand, Sharon’s husband basically killed himself by wandering into the forest and just sitting down as far as we can tell. No one in any of the recent killings seemed to have that reaction.”

Did that help or didn’t it? Maybe? She wasn’t sure. And no one to question in any case. Not unless she figured out how to talk to ghosts, but if that was an unused muscle inside her head, she certainly hadn’t found it yet.

“Thanks,” Chris said. She glanced at Carrie, who shrugged. “I’m not exactly the brains here, but surely that could help? Developing a case, something like that?”

“Sure,” Carrie said, playing along. She tried her best to try and think what Chris might say. “It’s… Maybe it’s nothing. But it’s good to know, just in case.

Gabriel nodded as if she’d made some kind of sense. “So, been doing this long? Play ghostbusters or medium or whatever?”

Carrie didn’t answer until Chris looked at her significantly. “Oh, uh, not long.” Sticking close to the truth was probably best. Not that she looked old enough to really say otherwise. Well, not unless she’d been Carrie, child detective. She barely managed to stifle a snort. “We just— I just wanted to try and do some good with my gifts.”

Gabriel looked like he didn’t believe her, but kept on driving anyway. “Well, if you can stop the madness around here, everyone would be very grateful.”

She tried to imagine that. Everyone being grateful to little Carrie White.

Maybe even Sue would forgive her.

But she couldn’t quite manage it. There had always been that little voice inside her, saying that she’d blow it with Sue sooner or later. She’d done her best to ignore it, but look where that had gotten her.

“Assuming anyone believed you, of course,” he added.

Right. That she could believe a lot more easily.

She sat back and looked out the window, letting the rumble of the car distract her from Gabriel and Chris continuing to talk in the front about more innocuous subjects. She talked about taking another run at the home cooked meal, he suggested going out to the movies. He made a bad joke, she gave a laugh so false that Carrie couldn’t believe he bought it.

Maybe it was just how girls always were around boys — she couldn’t rightly say — but it wasn’t Chris, shouldn’t be Chris and she couldn’t help disliking Gabriel purely on the basis that he seemed to make Chris less than she should be.

Chris would probably say that it was none of her business, but Carrie felt what she felt.

So she just did her best to pretend that she wasn’t there at all, thinking as little as possible. But then the thoughts she’d been trying to avoid ever since she’d woken up crept in, and wouldn’t leave. She couldn’t help wishing that Sue had been in the room when Carrie had awoken, just to touch her hand and reassure her. And she wished that the seed Chris had planted in her mind yesterday hadn’t taken root, that she could say for certainty that nothing was wrong with Sue. That she’d had more courage and confronted her when she’d finally come back last night.

Instead of just…

She felt her eyes prickling as she remembered what had happened. She was supposed to be happy, right, that she’d finally gotten what she wanted?

Sin, her mother would have called it. And maybe she’d have been right. Maybe there was a reason Sue had been gone, hadn’t been able to bear to stick around to see Carrie the next day. Maybe she’d finally seen Carrie’s unclean thoughts, her envy, and been disgusted.

And maybe Chris had been right, yesterday, when she’d said that whatever Sue had done with her, that didn’t mean she liked her. Maybe that was how Sue felt about her now too. Maybe she’d traded the light of Sue’s friendship for the base metal of her body’s desire.

Or maybe Chris had been right when she’d said something was wrong with Sue. Maybe that was the only reason Sue would ever look at her like that.

She didn’t know. She didn’t know.

Around and around the thoughts whirled around in her head, not giving her any surcease, threatening to dribble out of her eyes and nose at the slightest opportunity until finally Gabriel pulled into a parking lot in front of a large, grey box-like building. After bringing the car to a stop,he turned around so he could look at the both of them. “Eddie Grant and Amanda Kisren have agreed to speak with you. Don’t make me look bad in there, or I’ll… I dunno, I’ll charge you for wasting police time.”

Carrie huddled into her seat, keeping quiet. Chris virtually simpered, saying, “We’re definitely going to try our best, Gabriel.”

The fear, anger and frustration emanating from the building, like high school only much, much worse, made Carrie’s teeth ache as she approached.

She didn’t want to be here. She really didn’t want to be here.

But at least it was a distraction.

Gabriel went up to the reception and introduced himself and they were shown through to a room with a lot of round tables. A boy a few years younger than them was slouched at one of them, sketching random designs on the surface with a finger.

Chris glanced at Gabriel, then drew herself up, becoming more herself. “Eddie Grant?” she said. “We’re here to talk to you about the deaths.”

Carrie barely needed her mind extended to feel the flinch that ran all the way through him. “Y-yeah?” he said, attempting a smile. “I guess you’re a lot prettier than the last lot who came to talk to me about that.”

“Oh?” Chris asked, eyes sharp, body tensing slightly as she sat down opposite him.

“Less suits as well.”

“Some government types came asking questions a few weeks ago,” Gabriel interjected. “Got bored, didn’t help and went away again, just like you’d expect.”

“Yeah,” Chris said a little weakly, not that the guys seemed to notice. Carrie didn’t need to touch her mind to know what she was thinking. DSI. Hopefully they’d been and gone? “Just like you’d expect,” Chris echoed, rallying. “So, can you tell us about that night?”

Carrie let his words wash over her, extended her mind and read the memories thrown up by Chris’ questions.

_She lay in bed in the dark, face and body aching. Under her pillow, she played with her knife, an old and rusty thing. A harsh discordant sound buzzed through her mind as she did so, a feeling like her memories weren’t quite hers. A tight knotted rage grew in her chest, pulsing action, action, action._

_How much longer would she take this?_

_(Stab, buzzed through her head)_

_How much longer before she managed to find the will to actually do something?_

_(Stab)_

_Was she really going to just keep on laying here?_

_(STAB)_

_Adrenaline hit her like a kick in the head, making her vision swim, driving her off the bed, knife in hand. An old kitchen knife, battered, encrusted with brown rust._

_(STAB)_

_She was downstairs, Da with a bottle of beer in his hand, knuckles red and swollen from when he’d hit her. Ma, looking up at her, eyes wide._

_(STAB, pulsed through her head like a commandment from God)_

_The knife bit deeply into Da’s arm, a jolt as it hit bone, despite its decrepit appearance. Droplets of blood flew through the air like glittering jewels._

_(STAB)_

_Da’s arm lay on the ground, blood gushing geyser like from the stump. Her mother clutching at her, trying to pull her away._

_There was enough rage for both of them. Him for hitting, her for standing by._

_The knife cut her just as easily as him._

_(STAB)_

_Their bodies lay on the floor. Him almost decapitated, her with her sweater slashed almost to pieces, both in a conjoined pool of blood._

_God, so much blood._

_The rage died down, the knife dropping from her hand and all of a sudden her head was clear, the discordant noise finally stopping and she could see what she had done._

_What she had done._

Carrie surfaced from his mind to see Eddie had buried his face in his hands, sniffles echoing from behind them. “I didn’t mean to do it. I mean, I’d thought about it, sure, when my Dawas whupping me, but I’d never really wanted to do it. And certainly not Ma — he hit her just as much as me. I dunno why I did it, but I didn’t mean to.”

“Did you know any of the other killers?” Carrie asked, then concentrated on his mind as Chris took over the questioning. Not really expecting much — he didn’t feel like he had the same unseen muscles she did — but just in case…

Nothing. Sure, he’d known some of them, but there weren’t any traces of them in this mind, like she’d expect if he’d pushed them to do this.

“When did you first think about killing your Da?” she asked when there was next a moment she could interject.

_She lay in bed, brooding, had a knot of fear when she was out on the street, or playing in the woods or was walking home from school. Bruises and aches littered her body while she tried to bury her reality in dreams, where she could stop this happening. Satisfaction while grinding another boy’s head into mud, pretending that she was doing it to Da._

_The first hint of discordance, playing with her new knife, slicing up vegetation in the woods, pretending it was something else. The slowly increasing anger pulsing in conjunction with the discordance, both at home, resulting in more bruises, more rage, and elsewhere, resulting in more fights, more isolation, more reports home, all feeding into each other until…_

_Explosion._

The discordance felt a little other, a little natural, like something from outside but anchored from within. She didn’t think that it felt like how she’d do it, but she had so little experience.

But it was something. It definitely felt like something. Unless it wasn’t.

“So, what did you think?” Gabriel asked after Eddie had been led away.

“It felt like there was something influencing him?” Carrie couldn’t stop her voice from making it a question.

Gabriel raised a sceptical eyebrow. “What, like he was on drugs when he did it? Or like he was being possessed by a ghost or something”

“Not drugs,” she said before second guessing herself. “I dunno, maybe? I guess I’ve never… uh… felt the aura” —belatedly remembering what Chris had told her to say— “of someone on drugs before. Didn’t feel like being buzzed on alcohol though.” She nodded definitively. “Not sure if it’s a ghost or not. I got the sense that it seemed to creep up on him over a while, but he didn’t… mention seeing any spooky figures, and you would have thought that he might have mentioned that.”

“So it’s ‘something’ that ‘influenced’ him, but you’re not sure what. Boy I’m glad that I drove you girls out here today,” he said, getting to his feet and pacing.

“Look, Gabriel, I’m sure she’s trying her best,” Chris said getting up to join him, laying a hand gently on his back. “From what she’s said, she’s new to this too. Just saw the story and knew she had to try and help. Give her a shot at Amanda, and what have you lost? Half a day at most? And if it does help stop these killings..?”

He softened, coming back to the table and sprawling out next to her. “Yeah, yeah. I guess anything’s worth a shot if it means we can get back to normal, not just worrying when the next attack is going to happen.”

“Thanks,” Chris said, sitting down again herself, a warm smile that seemed genuine. “I really appreciate it. I… I want this to stop too.”

He reached a hand towards her and it wasn’t as though Carrie really cared one way or another, but she was grateful when the door opened and a sandy haired girl who looked only a little younger than them was escorted in. She looked at them and stopped.

“What?” she said sarcastically. “Am I a high school project now?”

“Sit down, Amanda,” Gabriel said, already sounding tired. “We’ve got some questions to ask you.”

“I don’t have to answer nothing.” She smirked, remaining standing and Carrie disliked her already. “Not unless you make it worth my while.”

Gabriel gritted his teeth, but Chris touched him on the arm. “Fine,” she said. “You don’t want to get your side of the story down, that’s your choice. I guess we’ll just have to rely on what everyone is saying about you at school.” She shrugged casually. “My job is just to ask you the questions, you can answer any you feel like.”

Gabriel gave her a sharp look, but didn’t say anything.

The smirk wavered on Amanda’s face and she sat down cautiously. “Well, I guess it’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be.”

“So, tell me what happened in the school yard,” Chris asked.

_She could see them, her former friends, talking amongst themselves. Laughing, giggling about her downfall. She reached inside her school bag for the only comfort she’d managed to find recently. A harsh discordant pulse resonated through her, anger rushing through her._

_(Stab)_

_Any one of them, any two, she’d know how to humiliate, how to destroy with words along. Any three maybe. She’d known them long enough, found out their secrets. But they’d all swarmed her once she fell._

_(Stab)_

_Lashing out with words against them all hadn’t helped. Even lashing out with her fists had just gotten her suspended._

_But now she was back and she’d make sure that they’d never laugh at her again._

_The discordance pulsed again and again through her, and she gloried in its fire…_

_(STAB)_

_(STAB)_

_(STAB)_

_Before finally drawing her knife, an old battered thing, encrusted with brown._

_(STAB)_

_She screamed in fury, in pleasure, lashing out at the people who should have stuck with her, rather than dropping her like yesterday’s news. With strength she didn’t know she possessed, she sliced straight through the wrist of her former best friend, held up to futilely protect herself._

_(STAB)_

_Another fell and another, the first taste of power for too many weeks too intoxicating to stop. Yells came from the direction of the school, a weight slammed into her— the football coach — but she joyously carved and carved until someone managed to smash the knife out of her hands._

_The discordant noise ceased._

_Her strength left her and she fell limp, helpless._

_Bereft, empty, she was subdued._

Feeling ill from the all too human malice she could still feel thrumming through her, a heightened echo from her past turned even more toxic and black, she took a moment to recover. Would this have been Chris if she’d managed to claw back power somehow? Was this what Chris would become, given half a chance? “You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”

Something in Amanda’s eyes flickered before she shook her head. “No, haven’t you been listening? I didn’t want to. I was just desperate to make the bullying stop.” She sounded sincere but…

Liar, Carrie thought.

“Where did you find the knife?” she asked.

_She was stomping home. She couldn’t believe Darren had dumped her like that, calling her a slut in front of the entire school. The whole cafeteria had laughed at her, her so-called friends along with the rest of them._

_Maybe she wanted to hurt them somehow, to get her revenge, to make the hurt go away. Maybe not, but…_

_Something caught her eye as she passed the Grant house. A knife, lying on the ground. An ugly thing, an old thing probably too rusty to cut a slice of bread without breaking._

_But it called to her, fanned the flame within her comfortingly, and she reached for it. A discordant hum echoed within her._

_Her thoughts stabilised, focussed. She’d hurt Darren, hurt them all. She wouldn’t let them hurt her ever again._

She let Chris ask the rest of her questions without delving into Amanda’s head again. After she was led away, Carrie turned to the other two. “It’s the knife,” she said. “I don’t know how, but it pushes them, makes them stronger. There’s something in it, something angry.”

“The knife?” Gabriel asked. “Really?”

“You’ve seen me move things with my mind and you think that a knife can’t be… haunted?” She wasn’t sure that it was the right word, but he’d been the one to talk about ghosts.

Gabriel shrugged with one shoulder, conceding the point. “I guess. What’s the next step?”

Carrie bit her lip, glancing at Chris, who shrugged slightly as if to say that she was the expert. Thanks, she thought but didn’t send, attempting to imitate the sarcasm that Chris wielded so well. “Um, I guess if we could quickly ask Eddie where he got the knife, we might learn where it came from. Apart from that… Amanda picked the knife up from outside Eddie’s house, so if someone hasn’t picked it up, then it should still be at that house we visited two nights ago?”

“We’d have seen it if it was, trust me,” Gabriel said. “Let alone if the same one had been at all four sites.”

Carrie shrugged helplessly. “I dunno what to say. Maybe my gifts might pick something up?”

Gabriel sighed. “I’ll see what I can do. It’s not going to be easy, though.”

Visiting Eddie again didn’t yield much more. The discordance again started when he picked up the knife — quieter, but still — from where it lay concealed in a hollow in a tree he happened upon while licking his wounds after a whupping.

It didn’t matter. They’d gotten a step closer to solving this — maybe a few steps — and hopefully they could stop this knife before it hurt anyone else.


	18. Chris

“Can you stop by the diner?” Carrie asked as they drove into town, her voice warbling a little as she did so.

Chris shot her a glance. Carrie’d been a little quiet since they’d picked her up this morning. Not that Chris was exactly certain how she’d be around someone new, left to her own devices in the back of the car, but…

Well, it wasn’t like Chris hadn’t known that Carrie’d be going home to Sue and whatever weirdness had possessed her.

Hopefully not literally.

Not that it mattered. Carrie could certainly look after herself, as she’d no doubt tell Chris if she pried. Chris certainly would if the positions were reversed.

Gabriel glanced at her and she shrugged. “Sure, drop us off here and you can go and check to see if Carrie can take a look at the McCrae house. We’ll be at the motel from about an hour or so if you get the go ahead?”

Gabriel nodded slowly. “No promises. And no spreading around town what we’ve been doing, okay?”

Chris gave him what was hopefully a placating smile. “Sure.”

He dropped them off in front of the diner and drove off. Chris made sure to look after him, just in case he was looking in a mirror, before following Carrie into the diner.

Sue wasn’t out front, in that blue and grey waitress’ uniform she’d been wearing when Chris had come in here last. Carrie was twisting her head around wildly, as if Sue might be hiding in a corner somewhere, so Chris took it upon herself to approach the formidable looking woman behind the counter.

“Hi, we’re looking for Ellen?” she asked, hopefully adding enough of a deferential note that she wouldn’t make the woman bristle, not so much as to appear a walkover.

Chris had her pride after all, regardless how long she ended up staying in town.

The women frowned. “Ellen,” she said, inflecting the word like a minor curse, “has not seen fit to show herself today. Without calling in, even. When you see her, you can tell that layabout that my generosity and patience with her have been quite exhausted and I’m docking her remaining pay for lateness.”

Well, that answered that then. Not that it really helped the oddity of it all — she couldn’t imagine Ms Manners willingly skipping a day of work like this, certainly not without phoning at the very least. And from the way Carrie was shifting beside her, she also agreed.

A door at the back cracked open, a guy a little older than them dressed in an apron peeking out. He glanced around, catching Chris’ eyes briefly before retreating backwards, closing the door behind him.

Once glance at the woman behind the counter and Chris dismissed any notion of following him. Instead she left the diner, Carrie in tow, and, after looking for the nearest corner on the street, started to make her way in its direction..

“What are we doing?” Carrie asked.

“Hoping this place has an easily accessible rear exit.”

Chris could see Carrie’s face crinkle in confusion out of the corner of her eye. “Why?”

Chris shrugged. “Ellen has the amazing habit of attracting affection wherever she goes. Kind of like a puppy with large expressive eyes wandering into a strange place. Maybe that’ll work in my favour for once.” She turned to look at Carrie. “Unless you can find her?”

Carrie flinched, looking downwards and something in Chris almost made her want to ask. “No.”

Almost, but not quite.

Luckily, there was a convenient door in an equally convenient alley, which Chris rapped on sharply. A few minutes later, the same guy she saw before opened it.

“Hi!” Chris said, smile wide, trying to make herself look like the kind of nice girl any guy would help out of a tight fix. The kind of nice girl someone like Sue might be friends with. “We’re Ellen’s friends. Is there any chance you’ve seen her today?” It was a long shot, but, hell, it wasn’t as though she had many other ideas barring going back to the motel and waiting.

“Um,” his eyes flicked between Chris and Carrie. “I haven’t, but, well, Sara? I think she mentioned seeing her this morning? Wait here, I’ll go and check.”

He disappeared back into the diner and returned a short time later. “Well, Sara didn’t see her, but one of her friends mentioned seeing her walking the streets at around six this morning.”

Not exactly the warmest of trails, but better than nothing. Chris supposed that she should probably bless the small town rumour networks, just this once. “Thanks. Could you give us directions, see if we can pick anything up from there?”

“Of course.” A hand was thrust out in her direction as he proceeded to do so. “Mike, by the way. Let us know if there’s anything else we can do. I mean, we may have only known her for a day or two, but this kind of behaviour doesn’t exactly seem like her, and we’re a little worried. Especially with…” He waved his hand in the air, presumably referring to the stabbings.

“Of course,” Chris said. “Thanks for your help.” The smile felt a little tight on her face. Again, Sue had charmed the locals with seemingly minimal effort on her part, while Chris…

Well, granted, she’d managed to do a little better here, with Gary who seemingly liked her for some reason, but Chris couldn’t help feeling that it wouldn’t last. Not when he had a better chance to look at her. Look at Gabriel after all.

Not that it mattered.

They went and fetched the Chevy and drove around — first to the road she’d been seen, then fairly aimlessly. But there was no sign of Sue, despite how small this place was. Carrie continued to fail to locate her, wherever they were in town, and got more and more blotchy faced with frustration as time ticked on.

“Time to get back to the motel,” Chris finally said. They certainly weren’t doing any good out here.

“No!” Carrie yelled, slapping a hand against the dash.

Chris couldn’t help flinching, just a little.

“Sorry,” Carrie muttered, looking away from Chris. “It’s just…”

Chris forced her breath to return to normal, annoyed that she’d let herself react that much. She really should be better about this now. “Yeah, I know. You’re worried about Sue.” She gave a shrug with one shoulder. “I’m kind of worried about her too. We’re just not doing any good out here, and well...”

“I guess.” Carrie looked despondently out of the passenger window as Chris turned the car around and headed back to the motel. Chris let her. It wasn’t as though it could hurt and hey, maybe Sue was heading back to the motel anyway. Almost before Chris had put the Chevy into park, Carrie was out the door and headed towards her motel room. She didn’t need to say anything about what she found when she opened the door. Her slumped shoulders told it all.

Fuck.

Chris walked up beside her and very cautiously rested a hand on her back. “We’ll find her. If she hasn’t turned up by this evening, I’ll… I’ll get Gabriel and his buddies down at the station involved.” She gave a twisted smile. “With everything happening, I don’t think it’s exactly a stretch that a girl who’s gone missing, especially in this weather, is in danger.”

Carrie jerked towards her and Chris couldn’t help flinching. It took a moment for it to register that Carrie was burying her face in Chris’ shoulder, a moment more to realise that the shuddering meant Carrie was probably crying. And from past experience, not the pretty kind either.

Oh god, this was awkward. Where was Sue when she needed her?

Oh. Right.

She manoeuvred them both inside the room and closed the door behind them, just in time for Carrie to burst into racking sobs.

Chris…

Carrie wouldn’t want her to see this. No one would. She was just confusing her for Sue in the moment. And… and just trying to imagine being that vulnerable in front of anyone else, especially someone she had such a complicated relationship with as Carrie…

No, Carrie didn’t want her to be here, not really.

She carefully helped Carrie onto the nearest bed, wrapped her up, let her hide her face in one of the oh-so-thin pillows. Carrie made noises like she was trying to say something in between the cries, but Chris hushed her.

Carrie didn’t want to say anything, not really. She was just being emotional.

“Don’t worry,” Chris said, leaving Carrie curled up there. “I’ll come get you when Gabriel turns up.”

She hurried out of the motel room closing the door quietly behind her, as if that would make anything better. But there was nothing in the room to do, not even read any of the cheap paperbacks Sue always had lying around, like lies about romance and love would make any of their lives any better. For want of anything better to do, she headed out to the lot to check out the Chevy, make sure that everything was working. She was still out there when Gabriel pulled in about half an hour later..

He wound down the window as she headed towards him. “I’ve managed to persuade Ms McCrae to let us take another look,” he said without preamble. His lips were thin, his jaw tense. “Just make sure that neither you nor Augusta do anything to annoy her or bring this side investigation into disrepute.”

She nodded. “I’ll make sure Augusta knows.” Not that she could imagine Carrie saying much if she didn’t have to, even on a normal day. “I’ll just go get her.”

She went and knocked on Carrie’s door. It opened a few minutes later, a drawn and pale Carrie with bloodshot eyes, a poster child for reserved sadness if she’d ever seen one, holding… one of Chris’ denim shirts. “I finished patching this for you,” she said in a small voice, handing it over.

Oh great. Chris didn’t have much of a heart that she’d admit to, but somehow Carrie managed to make her feel like she’d been stabbed right in it. “Thanks,” she said, taking it. “Um, Gabriel’s here. Apparently he managed to get us in at the McCrae house.”

“Oh,” Carrie said, sounding as if investing any emotion in her words was beyond her right now. “That’s good.”

Damn Sue. This should be her job, would be her job if she hadn’t been infected by whatever fucking weirdness had burrowed its way into her heart. Chris tied the shirt around her waist and guided Carrie to the car. She considered briefly sitting in the front with Gabriel but… Carrie seemed to need someone right now, and hopefully she was better than nothing.

If only barely, judging the way that Carrie seemed happy to ignore her on the way over.

It was probably a bad sign that Gabriel didn’t seem in the mood to talk either, but just right now, Chris couldn’t bring herself to give a damn.

Gabriel rang the doorbell when they got there, the sound of bells echoing faintly in the house rather than a cheap electronic buzz. Carrie had at least animated enough to start shuffling nervously, looking around though she didn’t seem to focus on anything in particular.

Chris just wondered if she could find something to do other than navigate between the two of them.

The door finally opened revealing a maid. “Deputy Suarez?”

“I called ahead?” he said. “I just need to take another look around to see if we missed anything.”

The maid nodded, but Chris could see her eyes flicker between Chris and Carrie curiously. Chris held in a sigh. Not that she’d had any real hope that this visit wouldn’t be the talk of the town within the hour, but apparently some small part of her had hoped.

The maid stood aside and they entered, Gabriel leading them up the stairs to the murder site. A door on the second floor opened, and Jenny poked her head out. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all since Chris had last seen her, eyes red, dark bags carved deep beneath her eyes.

“Ah, Deputy Suarez,” she said, voice gravelly, her eyes flickering between Carrie and Chris. “And friends I see?”

“They’ve… uh, got some relevant specialties.” Gabriel looked faintly pained saying that.

Jenny’s eyebrows raised. “O-kay?”

More on instinct than anything else, Chris decided to go for something near the truth. “Well, Augusta does. I’m more here as moral support. And, well, the reason that Augusta knew to talk to Gabriel in the first place.” She gave Jenny a cautious smile, trying her best to indicate that no, she hadn’t been using her when she’d come up to talk to her the other night.

It’d be nice if at least one person believed that around here.

Jenny’s mouth twitched upwards minutely as if in response and she looked back at Gabriel. “Actually, Deputy, if you don’t need Anne, would you mind if I borrowed her?”

He glanced down towards them and Chris looked to Carrie. Did she want her around? Carrie shrugged so Chris followed suit, thinking as hard as she could that Carrie should call if she needed her. She hoped Carrie picked that up.

“Sure,” Gabriel said, a note of relief underlying his voice that Chris couldn’t help feeling threatened by.

Not that it mattered. She had another person to focus on at the moment.

“Relevant specialties?” Jenny asked as soon as she’d closed the door behind them.

“I think I’m in enough trouble with Gabriel already to go into that,” Chris found it far too easy to admit, just tired with it all. For a moment, she was tempted to elaborate that they were hoping to stop any more deaths but… That would just lead to more questions, and why bother creating complications, right?

Luckily, Jenny seemed happy to let it go, slumping down on a chair in front of a desk stacked with papers. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said in a hollow voice.

Welcome to the club, Chris couldn’t help thinking. But she didn’t miss the invitation and, well, the opportunity to bury herself in someone else’s problems for a while didn’t seem unattractive. “Want to talk about it?” she asked, propping herself up against a wall.

“You won’t tell anyone anything I say?” Jenny asked with a small voice.

Chris shook her head.

“I know I shouldn’t believe you. No offence, but I literally know nothing about you. It’s just… I need to talk about this to someone unconnected to all this, or I think I’m going to explode.” She bit her lip. “You don’t have any connection to this town other than Gabriel, right?”

“And hardly him anymore.” Jenny gave her a questioning look and Chris shook her head again. “It’s complicated. I guess I’m also working for Gary Gipatrick for some extra cash while I’m in town, if that counts?”

“Good enough.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes tiredly. “The lumber mill is practically underwater. We haven’t been getting as many orders over the last few years. Dad kept on hoping things would pick up, didn’t want to hurt the town by laying off enough workers to make a difference but…” It was her turn to shake her head. “We hardly have anything left. The bank accounts are almost dry, he took out a mortgage on this place and… I don’t know what to do.” She gave out a hard laugh. “I guess whatever I do, people are going to blame me, say I should have listened to someone else’s advice, found some way around the problem.”

Chris made a sympathetic noise. “What do you want to do?”

Jenny laughed semi-hysterically. “What do I want to do? What do I want to do? I want to wave a wand, go back two days and stop my dad from being killed. What I want is to have somehow persuaded the old goat to share his troubles with me before I had to find out like this. Maybe get some hints about what he thought I should do rather than having to rely on what other people tell me he wanted. What I want to do is make the right decision. Or, failing that, the one that hurts the least amount of people.” She sobered, looking down at the ground briefly before jerking her gaze back up to Chris. “I don’t suppose you have any handy gems of business knowledge as well?”

“Sorry,” Chris said. “Apart from to say that you shouldn’t trust anyone who comes from outside and instantly says they do know what to do.”

“I guess that’s fair enough.”

“Do you want to talk about the options you’ve been presented with? Or do you want to talk about something else entirely?”

“I want to talk about something else, but… I think I need to get this out. Ifyou don’t mind?”

Carrie’s haunted eyes flashed before her again, and she couldn’t bear to turn someone else away so soon, even if it was someone she hardly knew. Even if she wasn’t exactly sure how she could help. “Be my guest.”

“Well, the town wants me to just carry on with things the way they were before.” She gave Chris a twisted smile. “I think the problem there is fairly obvious. I can probably only keep it open another few months or so.

“The option that my father’s accountant presented was to lay off half or more of the workforce. That should at least slow the haemorrhage of money. But the underlying problem — that a lot of the better contracts are going to bigger conglomerates — remains. And, well, if we don’t start getting the contracts, then we might well just be prolonging the death of the company. Of the town, really. Assuming it survives the first cut. And everyone will hate me regardless. Maybe someone will come to stab me as well.

“Then there’s the option that my father’s partners — the ones he sold a share of company to in order to survive this long — favour. Selling the company to one of the conglomerates. Maybe they’d make things more efficient, meaning losing jobs anyway, or at the very least cutting wages. Maybe they’d decide to just use one of their existing mills for the wood.” She shrugged, kicking the ground with one foot. “And I can’t deny there’s a certain temptation to this path, despite the fact that it might well be the worst for the town. Whatever happens, it wouldn’t be my fault. People might hate me for a while, but they’d have someone else to focus on after a bit. And, worst comes to the worst, I could always leave.” She tilted her head. “So, what do you think I should do?”

“I’m really not the person you should ask,” Chris said, grateful that there at least she could be completely honest. “Judging by my history, selling up and getting out of town without a second thought. But from what you’ve been saying, you actually care about the people here and what happens to them.”

Jenny studied her for a moment, before dropping her gaze. “I guess. As much as I sometimes hated it here growing up, as much as I enjoyed the chance to get out of here and go to college, I didn’t really think about not returning either. Dad’s lectures must have left more of a mark than I realised.”

“So, bearing that in mind…” Chris said, trying to help her come to her own conclusions. “How do your various options stack up against that?”

Jenny sighed. “One isn’t going to help anyone, no matter how much everyone is going to hate me for doing anything else. And three… I just don’t know enough to choose a company who’s good for anything but what price I can get for myself, at least not yet. So, two, I guess.” She rubbed her eyes tiredly. “Now to try and figure out which people I least need to keep on running. Fuck,” she slowly exhaled. “This week just keeps on getting shittier.”

Chris took a chance and gently reached out to touch her arm. “You can only do your best. That’s all anyone reasonable can expect. And maybe you’ll find a merger that’ll work for the town as well as for you.”

Jenny twisted her hand around to grip her wrist in turn. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s… I just think I really needed to talk about this with someone. Everything just kept on going around and around in my head, and…” She gave a raspy laugh. “It really helped to just get it out there.”

“I’m just glad I could do something to actually help.” To at least help one person that day.

Jenny gave her a weak smile. “I think you’re wrong, by the way.”

Confused, Chris asked, “About what?”

“I don’t think you are the type to cut and run. I mean, you’re still here, trying to do something, even though you don’t have a single tie to this town.”

Something uncomfortable writhed within her, but she couldn’t find the words to deny Jenny’s assertion. “Maybe,” she settled for.

There was a knock at the door and she opened it after Jenny gave a nod. Outside were a frustrated looking Gabriel and a downcast Carrie. Chris knew what they were going to say even before Gabriel opened his mouth.

“We couldn’t find anything.”

Which meant either Carrie couldn’t find it even with her new knowledge or someone had gotten to it first. Either way, unless they thought of something else, they’d have to wait for the next killing and hope they could do something then.


	19. Carrie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After finally finishing my edits, I'm going to start posting the rest of this. Thanks to everyone who's commented and left kudos!

As they drove away from the McCrae house, Carrie couldn’t stop her mind going around in circles. She had been so sure that she’d be able to sense the knife, hear the discordance. Feel something, anything at all, now that she’d felt it once. But there’d been nothing.

She’d stood in a room that still bore traces of blood and she’d felt nothing.

If there was an invisible muscle to pick up those kind of emanations, she surely didn’t have it.

And Sue. After everything, she still couldn’t find her.

If Sue even wanted to be found. After last night, Carrie certainly couldn’t blame her if she didn’t.

Another failure. Why couldn’t she stop messing up?

“Where do you want me to drop you off?” Gabriel asked brusquely. “As long as it's on the way to the station,” he added. She couldn’t blame him for having no time for her after this. They might be closer to the truth but that didn’t help Gabriel just now, and he doubtless had important police work that he could be doing, instead of taking a day off to ferry them around.

She snuck a glance at Chris, who’d been quiet ever since they’d retrieved her from that woman’s study. She hadn’t seemed angry at Carrie or irritated by her at the moment… and the thought of going back to that motel room to wait for Sue made her want to cry. Again.

Assuming of course that Sue showed up at all.

“Just drop me off with Chris?” She couldn’t help making it a question.

Apparently Gabriel got that too. He glanced at Chris, who shot her a look before shrugging as if she didn’t care one way or another.

Thanks, she wanted to say, but couldn’t quite manage to get out.

Gabriel dropped them off and, once away from him, Chris seemed to animate, just a little. “So,” she said. “What’s our next step? Actually, hold that thought and stay here a minute.” She waved at an older man, then disappeared into a back room.

“So you’re Anne’s other friend,” the man said to her.

It took her a moment to remember that was the name Chris was using here and then she nodded. “Yessir.” She stuck out her hand like she’d seen people do. “Augusta, pleased to meet you. Thanks for giving Anne the job.”

He took her hand and shook it firmly. “Gary, pleased to meet you too. Like you more than that other friend of hers.”

Her immediate impulse was to defend Sue, the next shame that anyone could compare them. After all, she’d been the one to hurt Chris, no matter how much she’d been provoked. Sue had never done that. Sue would never do that, even if she…

No version of Sue could ever hurt Chris, even if she was being influenced.

But that wasn’t a conversation she was going to have with an outsider. “Then I’m sure you haven’t seen Ellen at her best,” she said as nicely as she could.

Chris came back out in coveralls. “What do you want me to work on first?”

Gary pointed at a car. “Why don’t you start there?”

“So, thinking about making a career of this?” Carrie asked whilst Chris was deep in the car’s guts.

“Maybe,” Chris said. “I have to settle down some time after all, and apparently this is something I can do.” There was something in her voice that Carrie couldn’t identify, and that twisted at Carrie’s insides.

But it wasn’t like she had any say on what Chris did. She’d given that right up back on the first night in the motel room. “If that’s what you want to do,” she said, scuffing the ground.

Chris popped her head up and studied her. Carrie couldn’t help noticing that she’d already managed to get a smear of grease that accented one cheek. “You got another offer for me?”

And the thing was, Carrie didn’t. Not really. Chris had fled Chamberlain with Carrie and Sue because she’d killed or seriously hurt a Fed, but she’d only done that for Sue. With the fractious way things went between them on occasion, looking back Carrie was mostly a little surprised that she hadn’t — that they hadn’t really — left before.

This was the first concrete thing that they’d done since going on the run, and look how this was turning out.

If Sue was hurt by this, hurt any more, it’d all be Carrie’s fault.

Still, “I dunno. Is travelling around the country, maybe finding problems to solve the kind of thing you’d be interested in?” Because if she was, well, Chris had already proven how useful she could be.

“I’ll think about it,” Chris said neutrally, then got back to the car.

An awkward silence descended over the garage. Carrie searched for something to break it up.

“Well, if you are planning to stay, you’ll probably want some more clothes,” she said. “I dunno what the shops around here are like, but…”

“I think I’m kinda used to shirts and jeans now,” Chris said dryly.

“Yes, but surely you want to look nice every now and again.”

“I guess,” Chris said, kind of resigned and kind of not.

That led into a more general discussion of fashion and clothing choices. It was surprisingly pleasant. Back in Chamberlain, Chris’d pretty much always stuck to the safe choices — ones that looked expensive, pretty much always the latest fashions, well the latest that had gotten as far as them, but not really much in the way any personal style that Carrie could see. Ever since then, well, it wasn’t as though they had the money or space for much that wasn’t functional. But every now and again Chris would happen to mention something she thought looked nice and, as one third of her world, Carrie had made notes. Maybe not as assiduously as she had for herself or Sue, but…

“I honestly didn’t realise that you paid that much attention to me,” Chris said after she’d challenged Carrie to come up with a few fantasy sets of clothes for her.

Carrie hid a smile, regardless of the fact that Chris couldn’t see her at the moment. “Upset that I can still manage to surprise you?”

“A little,” Chris said, not sounding it in the slightest.

Silence descended again, this time a little more friendly, but Carrie couldn’t help searching for something else. It was weird, but she realised that in all the time together, they’d never really had a conversation, just the two of them. Sometimes they’d talked at each other, but… Sue had always been there, somehow, whether she’d been in the room or not.

Or it’d been sniping and bitterness, but Carries didn’t really count that either.

“So,” Carrie said. “Exactly what are you doing at the moment?” It wasn’t something she’d paid much attention to before, but she had the sudden impulse to learn more about what she cared for.

That did make Chris pop her head up to look at her. “Looking to replace my skillset?” she asked, an edge in her voice, humour gone.

Carrie looked down, scuffed her shoe. “Sorry,” she said, feeling her cheeks flush. Apparently she couldn’t do anything right.

Chris sighed and her voice softened. “Well, I guess it wouldn’t be such a bad thing for you to learn a few things.”

She didn’t slow down what she was doing too much, and Carrie was fairly sure that a lot of things were just going in one ear and out of the other, but… It was nice to listen to Chris when she was talking about something she had passion for. A liveliness to her voice, a softness that lacked her usual edges. And maybe Carrie would remember something useful for the future. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

Gary occasionally chipped in, adding details or correcting Chris on some point, but not maliciously or dismissively, the way even Carrie had noticed some guys did. Chris didn’t seem to mind either, from what Carrie could tell.

She didn’t make herself small around him.

She liked Chris like this, couldn’t help wondering why it’d never happened before. Chris certainly hadn’t made it easy, but maybe Carrie hadn’t either. Not that it would last, with Chris leaving, but Carrie resolved to try and enjoy it while it did.

As much as she could while worrying about Sue. About… about…

She didn’t even realise that her eyes had started burning again before Chris wiped her hands with a rag, took her by the elbow and called out to Gary, “Mind if I take a quick break? I know I haven’t been here long, but…”

Gary popped his head around the hood of a car, took one look at them and jabbed his thumb towards the back of the garage. “Sit her down in the office and get a cup of something warm in her.”

Chris flashed him a quick smile as she started guiding Carrie back that direction. “Thanks.”

“Do you think he has any hot chocolate?” Carrie asked. She sounded a little more pitiful than her pride’d normally allow herself around Chris but, well. That horse had well and truly already bolted today, hadn’t it?

“I’ll see,” Chris said, dubiously. After she sat Carrie down, she rustled through the cupboard over the sink. “Oh,” she said, sounding surprised. “There is some here at the back.” She unscrewed the top and sniffed. “Not sure how old it is though.”

It was so weird to see Chris potter around like this, like she was some kind of homebody, with hardly any reluctance at all that Carrie could see. The ache rose in Carre again, that in this moment Chris seemed more like Sue than Sue had when Carrie had seen her last. The lump in her throat was so big that she just stared at the chipped mug full of hot chocolate when Chris finally handed it to her.

“Thanks,’ she said into it, thickly.

“Don’t mention it,” Chris said flatly. “Really.”

As Carrie slowly sipped at her drink, she could feel Chris’ eyes burning into her from where she was propping herself up against the counter. She must look like a miserable lump, vulnerable, and part of her couldn’t help feeling like she was just waiting for the razor’s edge of Chris’ wit to lay her open to the bone.

But part of her…

“You can talk about what’s bothering you,” Chris said finally, reluctantly; as though the words had been dragged out of her. “If you actually want to.”

She did, she realised. Even if Chris would think less of her than of the dirt beneath her heel, she really did.

“I slept with Sue last night,” she said miserably. “I remembered what you said yesterday, about her seeming off, but I still did it. I Sinned.” She couldn’t stop a sob escaping her mouth. “She offered, and I couldn’t stop myself, the base lusts rising up within me. And that must be why she’s missing, why she left before I woke up this morning, because she can’t stand the sight of me.” Her resistance crumbling, she blubbered helplessly over the cup, doubtless going red and blotchy but somehow still keeping any of the hot liquid from splashing into her lap.

“Oh god,” she heard Chris say, dismissing her, confirming Carrie’s opinion of herself, but then she was next to Carrie, lifting the cup out of her hands and placing it on the desk next to her. Then she rested a hand on Carrie’s back, not hard, not jabbing it into her ribs or anything like that, but... soft, almost gentle. “I’m really not good at this,” Chris said, groaning. “This really should be--” She cut off too late, the unsaid name echoing loudly in Carrie’s ears.

Sue should be here, should be the one comforting Carrie. If she hadn’t done what she did; hadn’t driven Sue away. She curled up tighter and tighter on the chair, but was unable to make herself small enough to hide from the circling thoughts.

“It could just be a Sue thing,” Chris said abruptly. ”Drawing away after sex. Like, remember the first time we had sex in a bed? She didn’t speak to me for over a day after that.”

Oh. Carrie did remember that, a couple of weeks after they’d left Chamberlain. Sue had been so uncomfortable when Carrie had walked in on Chris sprawled catlike out on Sue’s naked body, that she’d seemingly unable to even look at Chris for the rest of the night and had spent the next day being very determinedly cheerful purely in Carrie’s direction. Carrie’s stomach had been a confusing mix of emotions, anger at Chris, pleasure at Sue’s attention and other, less identifiable things lurking in the background.

That had been their first time in a bed? They seemed to work so well together — so well in a way that Carrie could never match — that she’d assumed… Well, she’d assumed that they’d been Doing It since well before they all left; that it hadn’t even been their first time since they’d run away together, just the first time she’d caught them.

“Oh.”

“And, well, you must have noticed that pretty much every time we finish having sex, she immediately goes off and huddles with you. It’s kind of her thing.”

Carrie wanted to snap and bristle at the bitter tone Chris was using about Sue, but… Thinking back on it, she couldn’t exactly say that she was wrong. Which set off another cascade of worry. “So you think I’ve taken that away from her as well?” With her base urges. “That now she doesn’t have anywhere to turn, so she just left?”

Chris sighed. “I think Sue needs to sort her shit out, but… No. I never thought she’d treat you that way when you finally Did It,” she said in only a slightly mocking parody of Sue. “But maybe she needed some space to figure things out. And if she is being influenced by the spirit of a dead woman who was murdered by her husband or whatever, I can’t imagine that would help.”

And that, finally, was enough to drag Carrie out of her spiral. She stood up, knuckling the tears out of her eyes. “We have to find her,” she said determinedly. “No matter what’s up with her, she needs us. Do you think… Would you be able to ask Gabriel if he’d be willing to help us now?”

Chris looked sour. “I doubt that Gabriel’s in the mood to be doing us any favours at the moment, but we could give it a shot, I guess.”

“At the very least, we could ask him how he’d find her, follow what he’d do.”

Chris hesitated, and Carrie remembered that there might be reasons that she wouldn’t want to push him on this. That she might well want to stay here, making a life in this town, with Gary, with Gabriel. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Stay here. I can ask him myself. You don’t have to get involved.”

For a moment Chris stood still, calculations clearly running behind her eyes. “No,” she said finally. “I better head off with you. I imagine I can sweet talk him better than you can. Besides, if we do end up looking for Sue ourselves, I’m the one with the car.”

Despite Sue, despite everything, Carrie couldn’t help giving Chris a wide smile, albeit a little soggy around the edges. For all Chris’ reluctance, she had their back when they needed her.

Moving a little stiffly, as though she wasn’t quite used to the movements, Chris reached out and took Carrie into a hug. It wasn’t anywhere near as nice as Sue’s hugs, but Chris was here and she was clearly trying. “Don’t worry about Sue,” Chris murmured into her hair. “Whether it’s a freakout or possessing spirit or whatever else, I can’t imagine that there’s a power in the universe that can keep her away from you.”

Carrie hugged her back, as tightly as she knew how. “Don’t think I’ve given up on you either. Even if you go your own way, you can always call on me if you want to.”

Chris released her quickly and turned away, but not before Carrie saw a slight blush on her cheeks. “Well then,” she said brusquely. “Time to go bother Gabriel.”


	20. Chris

Staring at the station, Chris abruptly wished that Sue was there with them. Not that she didn’t want her there anyway — for Carrie’s sake of course —not to mention the fact that if she was, they wouldn’t need to be doing this in the first place but…

At the end of the day, Sue had the kind of earnestness that made people actually like her. It was a quality that Chris had never really mastered and one that was definitely failing her with respect to Gabriel. If Sue was here, she’d doubtless manage to calm the troubled waters, make Gabriel see that they were, in fact, trying to help.

Instead of him just seeing the lies upon lies Chris had been feeding him ever since she arrived in town.

She couldn’t help worrying that she wouldn’t be welcome back at Gary’s sooner or later either. Probably sooner given the way things were going. Not that she was planning on staying that long, but… It’d been nice to find a place she could just relax for a while. However temporary that’d turned out to be.

She took another glance at Carrie’s stupidly hopeful face, just to remind her why she was doing this, and entered.

“Wow, look who’s turned up to give Gabriel an excuse to skip more work,” Gregg said as soon as she entered. If anything, his voice was even more bitter and grating than yesterday.

Gabriel hunched his shoulders a little. “Don’t you have work to do?” he snapped, not looking at him, keeping his eyes on Chris.

Gregg gripped at his side and for a moment, with a lurch of her stomach, Chris thought he’d actually do something, but instead he just muttered angrily to himself. In the meantime, Gabriel had gotten to his feet and advanced on Chris with a frozen smile on his face.

“I thought I’d made it clear enough that I have better things to do with my time than waste it on you,” he said quietly but forcefully as he moved to loom over her.

Chris tried aiming an apologetic, conciliatory smile up at him, but it didn’t seem to soften him. “I’m really sorry, but our friend Ellen hasn’t turned up yet and we were hoping…”

“Excuse me, but I think this is a conversation that Anne and I need to have in private,” Gabriel said to Carrie, cutting Chris off as he took her by the arm, guiding her towards an inner door.

The windows rattled and Chris flung Carrie a quick, pleading look, hoping she got the message to keep calm. She could handle this. She’d handled worse. And creating a scene here wouldn’t help anything.

Thankfully nothing happened to Gabriel as he opened the door, pushing her into what proved to be a store room with a not exactly gentle amount of force. He shut the door behind him with something that was almost but not quite a slam and she couldn’t help flinching.

“What the hell do you think you’re pulling here?” he growled, far too close, far too loud. For a moment, he looked just like Billy. “I know this is just some kind of game to you, but where the hell do you get off playing your games when I’m at work?”

She swallowed and tried to edge away from, halting when her back hit shelves. “I’m not playing a game here. My friend is…”

“I thought that Augusta was psychic. What’s the story about why she can’t find her now? Her power’s not working again, just like it mysteriously does every time it could have a useful effect outside of lifting pieces of plastic?” He stepped close as he spoke, and it felt like what oxygen there was in here was fleeing the room.

“We don’t know, okay? We don’t know why she can’t find Ellen, why she can’t find the knife, but we’re worried that it might be connected and we’re worried about her.”

“So, what, you’re telling me that you think she’s going to be the next killer? And why are you so worried about her if you didn’t know her that well, and you had a fight with her anyway? Are you ever going to stop lying to me?” He raised his fist and she couldn’t help it. She ducked away from him, almost falling over and letting out a humiliating little whimper in the process.

That at least stopped him, getting to back away, relaxing his fist. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, having the gall to sound surprised.

This at least was a potential weapon she could use against him. “You could have fooled me,” she spat, staying crouched down but looking venomously up at him. She wanted to unsettle him, not make him consider her a physical threat on any level. “Getting me into a small enclosed room, just us, no one else, where you could do anything you liked with no witnesses.”

“What? No,” he said, stumbling further back.

“You certainly wanted to make me feel threatened by you, crowding my space like that, raising your hand. After all, who’s going to do anything? You’re the deputy, I’m just a stranger passing through town.”

For a moment, she thought she had him, then he seemed to rally. “Oh yes, it’s so easy for me,” he said, a black look settling over his face. “Blackburn took a chance on me, giving me this job, this opportunity. You see the colour of my skin? A white girl makes a complaint about me — especially one rich enough to be going to college — and I’m gone. That’s it, no more chances for me. Wouldn’t be surprised if I got jail time and that’s the rest of my life gone. Hell, given you’ve been cozying up to the McCraes, you could probably get my father canned too. You think you’re worried about me? I’m terrified of you and whatever games you’re playing here. You can just leave. I don’t have that luxury.”

Chris just stared up at him, unable to form coherent words. She’d… sure, in Chamberlain, she might have been aware of that calculus. Honestly, the old her might well have used it against him, a weapon like any other to be wielded to effect. But here, when she was so vulnerable… She’d never even considered it.

Christ, she was losing her edge. Not that she thought she’d use it now, but she should at least have been aware of it. He was shaking, vulnerable in a way that she’d never seen a guy before.

He offered her a hand up and she took it, the strength of his grip no longer threatening, at least for the moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said, trying to seem as sincere as Sue somehow would make it. “I…” Maybe it was time to offer up a little vulnerability of her own. “I saw police. I saw guy and…” She shrugged, gave him a twisted smile. “I have experience with knowing how vulnerable a girl can be to a guy.”

“I’m sorry too,” he said, moving away once he’d helped her up. “I shouldn’t have moved up to you like that, like you were a guy squaring off against me. Not saying your response was unreasonable, but…” He looked her solidly in the eyes. “I’m really tired of feeling like you’re using me.”

She took a breath, released it. “Okay, no lies.” She outlined the basic events that had happened about why they’d come to town and what had happened since, keeping pretty much to the truth. She kept the changed names and didn’t go into details about what Jenny had talked to her about., but pretty much everything else was there “So we’re really worried about Ellen, and we’d really appreciate some help finding her. There’s even a chance that finding out what’s happening with her might help us locate the knife and stop that too.”

Thankfully, he seemed to believe her explanation. “I’m still not okay with the way you’ve been lying to me, but… If it helps stop the madness around here, I’m willing to give this a shot. So, what, you think that the necklace is possessed by the spirit of Sharon and the knife by her husband?”

Chris shrugged. “Honestly, at this point? It’s as good an idea as any. We didn’t have any clue that could happen before we got here, but things here seem to be weird even by our standards.”

Gabriel nodded to her. “And thanks--” He broke off at a commotion from outside.

Chris’s stomach dropped.

What now?


	21. Carrie

“You managed to finish that goddamn report yet?” A roar echoed around the room

Carrie jumped, jolted from her nervous contemplation of the door that Chris had been pushed through. An older man — Blackburn if she remembered correctly — stood in the doorway of the only office she could see, looking stonily at Gregg.

Gregg jumped to his feet and marched towards Blackburn, his anger so obvious that Carrie was almost surprised that she couldn’t feel it beat against her. “Sure, Sheriff. Got your report for you right here.” His hand was at his side again, near his gun but not on it.

Blackburn drew himself up to his full height, obviously trying to use the extra few inches he had on Gregg to look down on him. “Just what the hell do you think you’re doing, you useless—” His words were cut off by a grunt as Gregg punched him in the stomach.

No, it wasn’t a punch, it was a blood covered knife he’d buried in Blackburn.

For a moment, Carrie just juddered to a halt, unable to do anything other than stare at Gregg as he slashed straight across Blackburn’s chest, carving straight through flesh and bone as though it wasn’t there. Blackburn let out an awful gurgling cry, toppling away from Gregg who just kept on manically slashing.

“Who’s useless now?” he yelled, blood spurting over him, painting the doorway. “Who’s doing something, and who’s standing gormlessly by? Huh? Huh?”

It was like something out of a nightmare. Carrie knew she should be doing something, but couldn’t think what.

The door that Chris had disappeared through slammed open and Carrie finally jolted into action, reaching out with her mind, trying to pull Gregg away from Blackburn.

“What the hell?” Gabriel yelled. “Get away from him, Gregg. Stop or I’ll shoot.”

Carrie’s mental fingers slid over Gregg without finding purchase, like he was somehow made of glass.

Bang, bang, bang ripped through the room, almost deafening Carrie. Gregg was so covered by blood that it was hard to see if he’d been hit, but if he was, it didn’t seem to slow him down. He turned around with a wide smile on his face.

“Ah, Gabriel. Just a little late as always.”

Carrie tried to shove him away as hard as she could, no finesse, just brute force, but it didn’t seem to have any more effect than the bullets had.

He twisted somehow and then he was next to Gabriel, knife held high, slashing down at his side. Gabriel fell away from Gregg, blood staining his shirt where he’d been slashed, but alive.

At least for now.

Gregg stood over him, savouring Gabriel’s helplessness for just a moment, before kneeling knife out to finish the job…

And then Chris smashed a water jug over his head.

He staggered, but quick as a flash slashed backwards, missing by a hair’s breadth as Carrie pulled Chris backwards with her mind, out of danger. He twisted after her…

Only to be hit by a desk that Carrie had pulled into him, sending him careening across the room.

Good. She might not have been able to hold him directly, but she could sure as Christ’s judgment slow him down with other things.

She kept him off balance by battering him with a storm of loose objects, the blood pounding through her head like a drum as she did so, before finally pinning him against a wall with the desk. Before he could twist out of there she smashed his hand as hard as she could with a bowling ball that had been on a shelf as some kind of trophy, leaving the extremity a bloody ruin and sending the old and battered knife skittering away.

Gabriel staggered to his feet, and held a gun on Gregg, but the fight had gone out of him, leaving him on the ground, clutching at the remnants of his hand and whimpering.

“What the hell, Gregg?” muttered Gabriel, as much to himself as anyone else.

“I was just so angry,” Gregg said, tears starting to stream from his eyes. “You’ve all been treating me like shit, and I just couldn’t take it any more.”

Gabriel glanced at them and Carrie shrugged. “Assuming he’s like Eddie and Amanda, yeah, he was already pissed.”

“We need to find that thing before anyone else dies,” Chris said determinedly, moving in Gregg’s direction.

“Carrie,” Gabriel said. “Can you phone for an ambulance? Make sure they know it’s urgent.”

For Gregg maybe, and Gabriel would need stitches. But Carrie didn’t need to be a doctor to know the pieces of Blackburn were beyond help.

She… How could she have missed all this, right under her nose? Even if Gregg had been proof against her unseen muscles, she should have seen the signs, the anger. If she’d just thought, she could have reached for his mind, to see if she could feel it at all, no need to go in.

But she hadn’t known him and even the people who did hadn’t seen unduly worried by his behaviour.

“I think the knife might be getting more powerful over time,” she said as she joined Chris looking for it. “Assuming what I saw in their minds was accurate, it didn’t cut anywhere near as good for either Eddie or Amanda. And Amanda certainly couldn’t move like that.”

If she had… There’d have been a lot more bodies.

“Managed to find the knife yet?” Gabriel asked from where he was doing his best to bandage Gregg, to stop the flow of blood from his shattered wrist.

I did that, she couldn’t help thinking.

Chris yanked a desk away from the wall, searching behind it. “No,” she said in a frustrated voice. “Carrie, do you have any idea which direction it went in?”

Carrie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to think. But no, she couldn’t remember anything about it after she’d sent it flying away from Gregg.

Couldn’t remember seeing it at all, in fact.

“Oh no,” she said, grinding to a halt. “I— When Gregg approached the Sheriff with the knife in hand, I didn’t see it at all until he was actually using it.”

Gabriel groaned. “So, what, you think it can’t be seen until it wants to be, or something?”

Carrie shrugged. “Maybe? It’d explain how you kept on missing it at the crime scenes.”

Gabriel paled. “And I’ve called the ambulance. There are going to be more people here in a few minutes. We need to clear this place before it chooses another victim. Fingers crossed.”

“Fingers crossed,” Chris agreed.

Between the three of them — Gabriel and Chris carrying Gregg, Carrie supporting him with her mind — they managed to get out of the station and Gabriel locked up.

“There,” he said as the siren of the ambulance approached. “I’ll tell Rogers on the next shift… I’ll tell him something. Talk to Gunnarson over in the next town tomorrow. We…” He sagged against the door. “I’m going to travel with Gregg to the hospital. From what you’ve been saying, he might not have been in his right mind, and…. And I owe him this. Pick this up again in the morning?”

Chris nodded, went over to him and gave him a hug. He tensed before relaxing into it. She didn’t seem quite so small or hesitant anymore so…. Obviously something had changed in the closet, and it wasn’t as though it was any of Carrie’s business anyway. “Look after yourself, okay?” Chris murmured, so quietly Carrie could barely hear it.

Gabriel nodded, twitched his mouth into a barely there smile then started ordering the paramedics around.

Chris clapped her on the shoulder. “Head back to the motel?”

Carrie nodded.

It wasn’t until they’d gotten almost to the motel that Carrie realised that they hadn’t gotten any help finding Sue after all.


	22. Chris

They were driving around town, twilight streets illuminated by the Chevy’s headlights, looking for Sue when Carrie cleared her throat.

“I’ve thought of a way we might be able to find the knife. Maybe.”

Honestly, Chris just didn’t want to think about the station just at the moment. She was worried enough about Sue and…

And she just didn’t have the space for the knife too. “Cool,” she said, trying not to let any of her fatigue spill out. “Bring it up when we meet with Gabriel tomorrow.”

Silence reigned for another few minutes. “I’m not sure it’s going to stay there,” Carrie said quietly.

Oh, great. That was…. Chris pulled over, because she just didn’t think she could drive in the snow and actually listen to this right now.

She turned to look at Carrie, who was nibbling at her lip. “Okay, spill.”

“I was just thinking… Amanda didn’t find the knife inside the Grant home, where Eddie dropped it. She found it outside.”

“Fuuuuuuck,” Chris breathed. “So, what, it might be gone already?”

Carrie shrugged. “Maybe. The other thing is that Amanda and Eddie were both angry when they found it, picked it up. So maybe the reason why we didn’t find it was that, well, certainly I wasn’t angry.”

“I did see Gregg getting chewed out the night of the murder,” Chris said thoughtfully, casting her mind back to that night. She hadn’t seen him picking anything up, but then again she hadn’t been looking at him after she cut in on him talking to Jenny.

Carrie nodded. “So we’ve got to get back there, as quickly as we can, hopefully before anyone else has a chance to pick it up.”

It felt a little like abandoning Sue again, but Chris didn’t have any desire to see more blood anytime soon. She put the Chevy into gear and pulled away from the sidewalk.

Chris’ stomach lurched as a possibility occurred to her. “You’ve said that your powers don’t work on it, or at least on the person holding it, and it’s certainly tougher than it looks. What if we can’t break it, or at least not easily?”

“Then I guess someone will have to pick it up. Just to make sure no one else does.” Carrie swallowed. “I can do it.”

The terrifying image of a possessed Carrie flashed through her mind. She wouldn’t — didn’t — even need the knife to kill. “No!” she blurted then added more calmly. “I mean, who else is going to stop someone if they go berserk? Which reminds me, you can’t touch the person, but do you think you can touch something that’s touching them?”

Carrie wrinkled her face in thought. “I dunno. Maybe? I mean, I was able to hold the table while it was pinning Gregg, so…”

“Good enough. I’ll swing by the motel, grab those chunky bracelets I got from that second hand store. Maybe… maybe you can hold them. If anything goes wrong.”

She could feel Carrie’s eyes on her. It felt like they were boring into the side of her face. “You sure that you’re okay with this?”

No. No, she really wasn’t. But… “Yeah,” she said. “Sure.” She flashed Carrie a tight smile. “I mean, who’s got more repressed anger than me anyway?”

“Ohuh,”Carrie said, sounding dubious. But Chris thought she also looked a little relieved.

The bracelets felt like manacles as she stood outside the station, like lead weights hanging off her arms. She couldn’t help shifting from foot to foot nervously. “So,” she said, trying to sound for all the world like she wasn’t bothered. “Do you want to give this a test run? See if you can move my arms just using the bracelets?”

She didn’t want that. She didn’t want that at all, visions of the fight in the motel room simmering just beneath her consciousness. But, equally, she needed to know this could work.

She needed to know that Carrie could stop her from hurting anyone. Stop her from hurting even Carrie.

“Are you sure?” Carrie asked, and Chris could see some of the same fears reflected in her eyes.

She nodded, before she could talk herself out of this.

Her arms lifted without her volition, dragged by the bracelets no matter how hard she tried to wrestle them down. As a test — just as a test, and not because of the twisting in her stomach — she tried to slip her hands free of the bracelets, but Carrie twisted them, pinning them against her wrists and arms, the sides of the bracelets digging into cloth covered flesh, not letting her go.

“Do you want me to stop?” Carrie asked anxiously.

And…. And just that question, the fact that she had that control here, at least theoretically, cut through the panic, letting her relax. Letting the same kind of heat that had flooded her back into the motel room enter her again. The part of her that seemed to crave being helpless, that was turned on by it.

It was awful. It kind of really wasn’t.

And it certainly wasn’t the time to look into her issues.

“You can stop now,” she said and immediately the pressure on her wrists was gone and they dropped to her sides.

Hopefully Carrie hadn’t noticed what she’d done to Chris, but by the flush on her cheeks and the way she couldn’t quite look at her, Chris wasn’t that lucky.

Her wrists ached, but the worst thing was, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Not that it mattered. Not that it mattered.

Okay, angry thoughts. She paced up and down in front of the station, thinking about the safest angry thoughts that occurred, about the way her so-called friends had abandoned her at the end, tried to remember the hurt, the pain, the loneliness. But it all seemed a little muted, like it happened to someone else a thousand years ago and before she knew it, she was thinking of Billy, of how he’d hurt her, how he’d humiliated her. How he’d pinned her, and made her do things.

And from there it was all too easy for her mind to slip to her most recent grievance, to the anger and terror in the motel room and…

And there was the knife, laying there on the ground by the wall, glinting at her somehow in the night and before she knew it, she’d picked it up, was holding it in her hand and…

(stab)

She slapped herself mentally. No. She didn’t want to…

(stab)

She could feel it whispering in the back of her mind. If she hadn’t had experience with Carrie placing thoughts there, or somewhere close to there, maybe she wouldn’t have realised.

(s…)

No! She stilled the voice in her mind, stilled the anger.

“I’ve got…” She stopped, not sure for a moment what she was going to say.

“What?” Carrie bounded up. “Have you found it?”

It? Oh, the knife, she realised. Realised too that the knife had already almost slipped from her grasp as it had slipped from her mind with the rejection.

Fuck. Why couldn’t anything be simple?

She tried to reignite the anger, pictured the motel again, Carrie pressing her against the wall. Imagined herself snapping at her. And then her mind slipped to the thought of Carrie touching her, a touch of fire as she caressed Chris’ breast while Chris could do absolutely nothing about it.

A jolt of heat, of anger, of lust, ran up from Chris’ core straight up through her stomach. But not fear, not now, not at the moment, because the Carrie who was so worried about whether or not she wanted things to stop…

She suddenly remembered how things had been with Billy before, when the fear had been more of a hint, more of a spice, of times when it had been more like wrestling between the two of them, of anger and lust intertwined, indistinguishable from each other. Hell, times with Sue when that had been a definite undercurrent.

It felt like remembering a part of herself that she’d forgotten.

And, most importantly, she could still feel the knife in her hand. It didn’t feel… happy, exactly, but it was still there.

“Okay,” she said, smirking a bit as she opened her eyes. “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”

“Really?” Carrie asked, looking more than a little skeptical. And like she’d never been hotter, to the thrum of Chris’ slightly aching body. Eyes bright, staring bravely at her, ready for anything.

Not mousy at all.

She swallowed. Not appropriate, Chris, she told herself. Not appropriate at all. If nothing else, she was fairly damn certain that Carrie had eyes for no one but Sue. Still, she couldn’t help saying, “Really. You can look for yourself, if you want.” Stupid with, well. But she didn’t mind Carrie entering her head, just at the moment. She did trust her, along with being angry at her and wanting her. She did trust her.

Carrie gave her an annoyed look. “You know I can’t… Oh.” She blushed bright red and looked away. “Oh, I, um.”

“I trust you,” Chris said, unable to help the smirk from growing wider. “Sorry about the rest of it.” She wrinkled her nose. “Apparently I can be a little twisted. As if you didn’t know that already.”

Carrie shrank in on herself, instantly becoming less interesting, and Chris had to remind herself of how she’d looked earlier. How she’d looked in the motel. Trying to maintain the correct mix of anger and lust.

“Oh, there you both are,” Sue said, appearing out of the gloom. Her voice was a mix of delight leavened with disapproval. Her gaze twitched downwards and focussed on the knife in Chris’ hand. “And there you are. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Chris’ stomach dropped and it felt like she’d been drenched by a pail of ice cold water.

She wasn’t feeling anger anymore. She wasn’t feeling angry at all.


	23. Sue

She had been looking for so long, had been cold for so long, that it was quite the relief to see her girls. Maybe underlaid by a trace of irritation that they had obviously decided to bury the hatchet without her help — she loved them, but any unmediated interaction was sure to be storing up problems for the future at best — but glad too.

And they’d found what she’d been looking for too. She knew that as soon as she lay eyes on it. How very thoughtful of them.

She crunched towards Chris, ready to claim it, to make everything better, only to have Carrie move in the way.

The trace of irritation grew stronger.

“Sue,” Carrie said urgently. “Your necklace. We think it’s affecting you, like the knife. Which, um, yeah. It’s the knife that’s making people angry, making them kill. And we think the necklace might… We’ve been worried about you.” She looked at Sue with big, wide, stupid eyes. “Where have you been?”

The incessant questioning lit a flame in Sue. After everything she’d done for Carrie, even giving Carrie everything she’d wanted last night... “I’ve been out, looking for this,” she waved a hand in the direction of Chris’. Chris was silent, hunching inwards, avoiding Sue’s gaze and, well, at least someone realised that this was all rather unreasonable. “The thing that you brought us here to find. Insisted on it, even. And now you complain when I try to help. Such gratitude, Carrie. I’m sure your mother would be proud.”

Carrie’s eyes filled and started leaking out of the edges, but she stood firm. ”Don’t you see how this is changing you? Sue would never say that to me.”

Sue let out a harsh laugh. “Why? Because the Sue you’ve been used to has been sacrificing every bit of herself looking after the both of you, trying to stop you from clawing out each other’s eyes? The Sue you’ve been used to has barely been able to afford a scrap of attention for what she wants, for what she needs. Even after I finally give you what you've been wanting, I decide to take a day or two where I’m not totally focussed on you, to get my head on straight, to think about myself for a change and… What? Surprise, surprise you don’t like it. Of course I have to be possessed just because I’ve got an opinion of my own for once. Otherwise, Carrie, you might be forced to admit how much of a selfish bitch you’ve been ever since we left Chamberlain. That there might be a reason I’m not totally obsessed with what we did last night because it wasn’t that worldshaking for me.”

Carrie’s eyes were wide and shocked, tears and snot dripping down her face as she sniffled. There was a part of Sue, a large part, that regretted doing this to her. But it was for her own good, for everyone’s good, if she just started listening to Sue. “N-no, that’s not… Sue wouldn’t…” she stammered between sobs.

“Y-yes, Sue definitely did,” she savagely mocked, shoving Carrie aside so she could advance on Chris. “Chris, darling, give me the knife. If it’s like Carrie says it is, do you really want to hold onto it any longer than you have to?”

Chris didn’t say anything, just ducked her head and inched away.

Sue placed her hand underneath Chris’ chin and gently lifted it so Chris had to look her in the eyes. “Doesn’t it make you tired, holding onto it like that? Wouldn’t you prefer to give it up?” This time she allowed an edge to enter her voice, a warning that if Chris was so unreasonable as to not comply, Sue might actually start to get annoyed.

Concentrating on Chris so completely that she even tuned out the muffled sobs from behind her, Sue could see the exact moment that even this passive resistance finally broke within her. And as Chris slowly lifted her hand towards her, all she could think was ‘Finally.’

Which was why it was quite so frustrating when an unfamiliar man’s voice called, “Stay exactly where you are. Carrie White, Sue Snell and Christine Hargenson, you’re all under arrest.”

Wom-wom-wom


	24. Carrie

The man’s voice shocked Carrie out of the state she was in. She hardly needed to turn around but she did anyway, to look at the eight men in suits, guns drawn, that had exited two of the three cars that had pulled up, unnoticed while she had been distracted. This time they had two of those machines, placed well apart from each other, their infernal humming already giving Carrie the tingling of an incipient headache even though she was careful not to extend her mind. Gabriel had gotten out of the third car, hand on the butt of his gun, a reserved expression on his face.

“They told me their names were Anne, Augusta and Ellen,” he said neutrally.

The man speaking shot him a side-long smirk. “I’m not surprised they did. I’m sure you’ll be delighted to help apprehend three genuine federal fugitives complicit in the murder of one federal agent and the crippling of another.”

That, at least, did seem to take Gabriel aback, and he looked at Sue. “Is that true?”

Sue was giving them all a black look, seemingly unconcerned by the guns pointed in her direction. “They were trying to kill us at the time. Because apparently if there’s one thing the DSI are better at than trying to intimidate teenage girls, it’s losing to them when they actually provoke a fight.”

The agent in charge narrowed his eyes. “Last time, you caught two agents who’d been sent to just ask you questions by surprise. Don’t think you’ll be that lucky this time.” The men with him had spread out so that there was at least one gun trained on all of them, three on Carrie. Thankfully, Sue subsided for the moment, though she didn’t look any the less mutinous.

“If any of you try anything funny, well, no one’s going to cry if you don’t make it to court,” the main continued pleasantly.

The agents continued to fan out, some of them getting out handcuffs.

She knew that if she tried to move things with her mind, she’d be incapacitated, especially with two of the machines around. But maybe there was a way Chris and Sue could get out of this. Maybe if she promised to go with them, do what they wanted. She gingerly extended her mind and touched the leader’s mind, relaxing when it didn’t send splinters of pain through her head.

His name was Cliff Adams and… “What does it matter?” Carrie couldn’t help asking bitterly. “You’re going to kill Chris and Sue anyway. Probably me too, after your scientists have run their tests on me.”

“That true?” Gabriel asked laconically, his hand still resting at his waist.

Adams didn’t seem to like his tone. “Listen, Deputy, you better just thank your lucky stars that we’re here to handle this little situation. And you’re damn lucky that you didn’t rub Carrie here the wrong way. The sight of what happens to the people who piss her off would make you puke.”

“So you wouldn’t mind if I came along, made sure that everything was done right?”

Adams’ smile got distinctly nasty. “Way I see it, this is a federal matter and you’ve got no jurisdiction here. So why don’t you just walk away now, before I have to start thinking of charges to file against you, Suarez.”

Gabriel pushed his mouth together into a slit and got into his car, but made no attempt to turn the keys in the ignition. One of Adams’ flunkies looked at him, but he waved it off.

There had to be something Carrie could do. She remembered the last time she’d faced them, how she’d managed to overpower the machine when she’d needed to, forced it to spin hard enough that it couldn’t keep up anymore.

Maybe she could do the same here. Push suddenly and with enough force that… well, it might kill her, would probably knock her out, but maybe Chris and Sue could get away in the confusion. After all, they didn’t have any powers, like as not the feds wouldn’t go after them too hard if they did manage to escape.

And it wasn’t as though either of them would miss her. Sue had been utterly clear about that.

She started to gather power, a shining ball of light in her centre, then gently reached out and tried to touch Sue’s mind. Still nothing. She tried Chris’ and…

And her mind was there.

Carrie couldn’t help feeling a little hurt at that.

 _Get ready_ , she placed in Chris’ mind. _I’m about to try and do something big_.

 _Wait_ , Chris thought. _I’ve got another idea._


	25. Chris

The knife felt heavy in Chris’ hand and in her mind, like it wanted to do nothing so much as drop to the ground and disappear. Even so, her fingers remained wrapped tightly around it, and it didn’t feel like that was all her doing, so maybe it had mixed feelings too.

It had just felt like such an effort to do anything since Sue had turned up, a completely unreasonable fear about what she might do twisting her stomach. At least it was a little easier to think now that Sue had turned her attention towards the DSI agents.

Lucky too that even with the wom-wom-wom of the machines, they hadn’t noticed the knife in her hands.

Okay, this was probably going to get her shot, but…

 _Now, Carrie_ , she thought, _do it now_.

Anger flooded her, rage at anyone who would harm Sue or even Chris, unavoidably twisted with regret at blood smeared across the ground.

The knife woke up, pulsing in her hand and she could feel the kick of adrenaline throb through her body.

 _More_ , she thought.

The pent up anger of school raced through her veins, every slight, every whisper, every joke at her expense. The regret was even stronger this time, her own, not Carrie’s, that she’d once been so silly and small to take part in this.

It seemed so unimportant now.

The knife was practically leaping out of her hand, ready to lash out at anyone and everybody, but especially the agent who was coming up behind her, handcuffs outstretched, ready to take her away, make her a prisoner again and…

And…

The regret balanced the anger within her. She didn’t want to add crimson smears to the snow, didn’t want to create more pools of blood after the ones she’d already seen today, after the ones she’d seen in Carrie’s mind. Didn’t want to create more pointless pain in the world.

She leapt forwards and hoped that she wasn’t just being a coward by choosing another path.

The first machine materialised in front of her, like she’d been in a trance and just woken up, and as shouts of alarm went up around her, the knife carved through it as easily as it had flesh earlier that day. A glance around and another blink and she was in front of the other and then just in front of pieces as shots fired and she hoped and hoped….

There was blast of something that felt like sound she couldn’t quite hear and snow flurried around her, blinding her. When she could see again, all eight agents were floating in the night sky, twisting and flailing around, their weapons nowhere to be seen. One — the leader she thought — clawed for his ankle and Chris just reacted, was suddenly close to him, cutting through the metal of the gun he was reaching for, maybe a bit of his ankle too before she was falling, falling, landing with a thump she barely felt.

“Stop!” Carrie practically screamed. “Stop or… or… You don’t want to drive me to or.”

“Get rid of them,” Sue said, stepping up next to Carrie, resting a proprietary hand on her back in a way that made Chris twitch. “They were going to kill us. We’ll never be safe as long as they’re out there. Kill them, Carrie,” she said with a very un-Sue like relish.

Carrie looked helplessly in her direction, but even cooled by Sue’s renewed words, Chris still felt like she was on that dizzy edge, liable to fall over into action at any moment. She didn’t want to kill, didn’t want Carrie to have to kill, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

There had to be something else they could do.

“Well, I don’t know about you,” Gabriel said from behind them. “But I haven’t seen any warrant for these girls’ arrest from you gentlemen and I’m not sure that this agency you’re a part of has arrest powers as such. And I’m certain I couldn’t stop these girls doing whatever they wanted in any case. So why don’t we all consider this a draw for the moment. You go off, decide what you want to do and get any papers you need to and we’ll talk about this then.”

The agents had been getting lower and lower in the air and by the end of his speech, they were on the ground. The leader glared daggers at everyone, but seemed to have enough sense to get his men out of there without further argument, at least for the moment.

“Thank you,” she said quietly to Gabriel as they drove off, red lights winking like demons’ eyes in the darkness.

He gave her a thin lipped smile. “I wouldn’t have called them if I’d known, but I guess I can understand why you left that out. ‘Anne.’ ”

She couldn’t help wincing a little. He didn’t ask whether or not the accusations were true, but she supposed that she’d earned that.

“I’ll head off now,” he said as he opened the door to his car. “I’d suggest you get out of town before they come back with reinforcements, but I’d really prefer not to know what your plans are. Just… Let me know if you don’t manage to get rid of that damned thing.”

She nodded. Didn’t say goodbye, didn’t wave; didn’t really think she’d earned that.

“Thank you very much for your help, Deputy,” Sue said sharply, not sounding like she meant it in the slightest. He nodded at her and drove off as well. She came up to Chris’ side and wrapped her wrist with her cold, cold fingers, squeezing just a little too hard. “So, unfinished business. The knife, Chris,” she commanded.

Just for a moment, it was like there was a strange man she’d never seen before there instead of Sue,Just for a moment, she felt as small as she’d ever felt around Billy, flinching, waiting for the next blow to land.

“No!” she said, tugging her hand away. “No, I’m never going back to you again.”

“You really think anyone else would ever want you?” Sue sneered. “You really think that anyone else wouldn’t get tired of your shit and just beat it out of you?”

And no, no she wasn’t going to take that anymore. She pushed her anger into the knife, overcoming its resistance, and swung around towards Sue, knife held high…

Only to be jerked backwards by her wrists, jerked into the air by them.

The bracelets, she realised. Carrie’s using the bracelets.


	26. Carrie

“She was going to stab me!” Sue exclaimed, eyes wide. Then her expression hardened. “She was going to stab me.” She looked at Carrie, then clutched onto her, giving her a grateful smile. “You saved me.”

She... She had. She hadn’t even thought about it, had still been so keyed up from the confrontation that she’d hardly even thought about it, just seen the movement and yanked.

Or maybe some part of her had thought about it. She’d yanked at the bracelets after all, not her body. She guiltily settled Chris back down onto the ground, releasing the tension on her wrists.

She hoped that she hadn’t hurt her too badly, couldn’t help wondering how she’d apologise this time.

Chris looked like she was trying to find something to say but couldn’t quite find the words. Before Carrie could reach out, touch her mind, Sue cut in. “I thought we needed her, but I should have known that you’d always be more than enough for me, Carrie.” She bit her lip. “I’m sorry that I left without talking to you this morning, that I said it didn’t mean anything to me. It did, Carrie. It really did. Far more than anything Chris has ever done for me.”

And it was… it was what Carrie had needed to hear, since she’d woken up, since before they’d left Chamberlain even. That she, Carrie, was more than enough for Sue. That what they’d done was enough for Sue. And hadn’t Chris wanted to leave, anyway, now that the case was pretty much done?

She cast an anguished look in Chris’ direction, asking what, wanting what she wasn’t quite sure. Chris was shaking her head, whether in negation or to clear it, Carrie wasn’t quite sure. She started to reach for her mind again and…

“Get the knife, Carrie. I promise you I can handle it, make sure it never hurts anyone again.” She looked so certain Carrie couldn’t disbelieve her. And certainly Chris, always the more angry, had been able to handle it, so. “And Chris,” Sue continued, looking in her direction, uncertainty flickering over her face for just a second. “Chris can look after herself. It’s not like the DSI will be looking for her anyway. You heard the deputy. We need to get out of here now.” She put the emphasis on the last word.

Sue was right and Sue was kind and between a compromised Chris and a compromised Sue there shouldn’t be any choice about who she’d choose. She felt guilty for even thinking about it. But she also couldn’t help remembering that out of the two of them, Chris had been the only one to let Carrie into her mind and that…

That made a difference. She couldn’t deny that it at least earned Chris a chance.

Somehow, despite Carrie attacking her, Chris still allowed her into her mind. _Please_ , Carrie thought. _Give me a reason to trust you._

 _She’s Billy_ , was Chris’ first thought. _No, fuck_ , immediately followed. _I mean, Sue would never hurt you, not if she was in her right mind. And she did. Before the DSI showed up, she deliberately hurt you._

 _It’s what people do_ , Carrie thought.

 _They shouldn’t, not like that_. Chris’ thought was plaintive. _Not if they love you. Isn’t that what Sue’d say?_

Carrie wanted to tell her that there was a part of her that’d actually been relieved that the waiting was over, that Sue had finally done it, like she’d been halfway expecting ever since they’d left Chamberlain. That Sue would finally see the broken things within her that everyone, including her own mother, had always been able to see so clearly.

“Carrie,” Sue’s voice cracked like a whip. “Now!”

 _Trust me_ , Chris thought.

And Carrie released her.

With a twist of space, Chris was next to Sue, knife glinting in the streetlights.

Then it slashed down, cutting the necklace in half.

Sue immediately collapsed into the snow as though her strings had been cut, wrapping her arms around herself and shuddering.

Chris had an almost beatific look on her face, shouting, “He’s gone. The fucker’s gone.” Then she whirled around and dashed the knife against a nearby wall, breaking the blade away from the handle.

“It’s gone,” she said. “I think…. She’s gone, finally.” She reached down and picked the knife blade up, offering it to Carrie.

She cautiously took it, but when she touched it, there was only an echo of anger, a memory. Like her memories of high school, something that at one point had been important, but didn’t have power over her any longer.

She slid it into a pocket then reached down for one of Sue’s arms, Chris following suit on the other side. “Come on,” Carrie said. “We’ve still got to get out of here.”


	27. Sue

The moon raced alongside the car as they sped out of town. Sue pressed herself into the side of the Chevy, still unable to get warm despite the fact that the heater was practically steaming up the windshield. The only thing stopping her from shivering was the fact that she was just too tired to tense her muscles any more.

Carrie shifted in the seat next to her. Sue hoped, probably uselessly, that Carrie didn’t have that wide, uncertain expression on her face, like she wanted to reach out to Sue, but wasn’t sure whether she had the right to.

Sue didn’t deserve the comfort of Carrie’s hand, the comfort of her presence at all. This mess was all Sue’s fault, and she didn’t warrant anything at all.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked for what seemed like the thousandth time since she’d crawled into the car.

“You don’t have anything to apologise for,” Carrie repeated. “It wasn’t your fault.” Her tone suggested she’d tear the throat out of anyone who disagreed.

If Chris said anything this time, Sue didn’t hear it, and part of Sue was grateful that she kept any false reassurance quiet. For all of Carrie’s gifts, Chris had always seen more truly.

Carrie apparently finally resolved her dilemma by gently laying her hand on Sue’s side. Bile immediately rose in Sue’s throat. How could she do that, be so kind, after what Sue had done to her?

“Stop the car,” she managed over the gorge.

Chris pulled the Chevy over and Sue dived out, retching at the side of the road, but nothing came up. She might have felt better if it did, despite the fact that she didn’t think she’d eaten anything since yesterday. Carrie rubbed her on the back in a way that was undoubtedly supposed to be comforting and it was just the last, last straw.

Flinching away, she turned towards Chris who was propped up against the car. “Chris, could I have a word with Carre alone for a moment?” she asked, her voice raw.

Chris shrugged, face laconic. “Sure.” She disappeared off into the darkness.

She turned back towards Carrie, who was wringing her hands together, looking wide eyed and nervous, like she was expecting Sue to lash out at her. The sight pierced Sue straight through the chest. She’d done this to her, had hurt her, made her think she’d deserved it.

Sue was just like everyone else who had been in Carrie’s life.

“I’m sorry. I know I’ve said this before,” she said over Carrie’s objections, “But… You don’t understand. It didn’t feel like I was being possessed, more… Like I was just thinking and saying the things some part of me was already thinking. And… So all the things I did to hurt you and Chris, that actually was me. Or at least a part of me. So I really do have to apologise.”

Carrie’s eyes were hurt and shiny. “So you really do think that? That I’m beneath you, that I’m selfish and don’t think about what you want? That...” She trailed off, but Sue could guess what she was thinking.

Oh god. How could she have done that to Carrie?

“No,” she said, reaching forward and clutching Carrie’s hands. “Of course I don’t think that you’re beneath me, and you’re about the least selfish person I know.” She tried to duck the question about Carrie not thinking about what Sue wanted. Which unfortunately just left… “And, last night… I’m so sorry I pressured you into doing that.” She gripped Carrie’s hands tighter. “I can’t believe I ever did that to you.” She felt like she wanted to scrub herself with bleach just remembering how she’d defiled Carrie.

“No!’ Carrie gripped her hands back. “I should be the one who was apologising to you for that. I mean, I should have known that you’d never… Chris thought that you’d been acting weird and I never should have Done It with you when you were like that.” She looked down miserably. “I understand if you want to spend some time apart. If you don’t trust me after that.”

Oh, Carrie. “Of course I trust you. It’s just…” She sighed. It wasn’t as if she really knew why this was freaking her out so much. Carrie had apparently wanted it, and it wasn’t as though Sue didn’t find her attractive, so..?

Maybe it was that it hadn’t been her choice, not really. That she’d built the occasion when she’d actually Do It with Carrie into such a distant, perfect, unattainable thing that the actual reality…

She didn’t know. She just didn’t know.

“I need some time to figure things out,” she finally admitted.

“Okay,” Carrie said. “Can I… hug you? Please?”

Sue felt the corners of her eyes prickling dryly, having long since run out of tears, and her mouth crinkled. “Of course,” she said hoarsely, and managed to avoid asking if Carrie really thought she deserved it.

She knew she didn’t, of course, but she was fairly certain of what Carrie’s answer would be, and maybe that’d have to be enough. At least for now.


	28. Chris

Chris studied the other two as she made her way back to the car. They were at least touching now, which she’d never have thought she would be grateful for, but the tension between them was still fairly damn thick.

Not exactly surprising, but still.

Well, fuck it. While people were in the mood for talking, she had a few things she wanted to stay.

She waited until the car had started up again and was steadily eating more miles before opening her mouth. “So, Sue. Told Carrie yet how she rocked your world last night?” The two faces in the mirror looked like they’d been slapped. There was a mean part of her that couldn’t help smirking. “You know, because if not, I have to let you know that you just might have some competition for Carrie’s physical affections.”

“That’s not funny,” Sue said tightly.

“No it’s not,” Chris agreed. “I mean, I’m used to your whole hot and cold act when it comes to sex. Not sure that Carrie is. And she’s been looking up to you, wanting you to find her attractive for so long, that now you’ve actually done it? She deserves a little more, and that’s me saying that. So get your head out of your ass and tell her how you feel about her on that side of things. Or don’t.” She looked straight into Carrie’s eyes. “I mean, you know what I think. You were in my mind after all.”

Sue went stiff and straight, offended in that overly proper way of hers. Carrie just blushed and looked away. “It’s alright,” she said wretchedly. “You don’t have to say a thing. Chris is just being…”

“Protective,” Sue said, swallowing, looking more than a little lost, as though the carpet had been snatched out from under her yet again.

Chris jerked her eyes away from the rear view mirror, stared out at the road ahead. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“You’re right though. Carrie, I do think you’re attractive. Hot even. And I would maybe like to do more when I’ve figured things out in my own mind. And Chris… I think I’ve been unfair to you too. You’re far more than the mean girl of Chamberlain HIgh, and someone I’d like to… call my friend? When I’ve got my head on straight? If you’d want that?”

It was Chris’ turn to swallow, for her eyes to go slightly misty, goddamnit. She just hoped neither of the others could see how the words had affected her. That maybe she’d needed something she hadn’t been willing to admit for far too long now.

“Let’s see how you feel when you haven’t just been possessed,” she said, a little gruffly.

It probably didn’t help her image that Carrie reached forward, touching her shoulder, but she couldn’t honestly say that she minded either. Luckily, no one had much to say after that for a while.

Carrie took over driving a few hours later and Chris took her place next to the gently snoring Sue. It was probably futile closing her eyes — whatever talent she’d ever had at falling asleep with someone, Billy’d probably destroyed — but she couldn’t deny that the warm pressure of Sue’s body curled up in the seat next to her… wasn’t terrible. And the next thing she knew, the sunlight was shining into her eyes, Carrie had replaced Sue next to her, and the awful events of the night before seemed that much more distant.

Which reminded her. “Sue, could you pull over at the next gas station?”

“Uh, sure?” Sue said. “I can pass you the remains of a bag of chips if you’re feeling hungry.”

Wow. Breakfast of champions. But her stomach rumbled and she took the offering anyway.

“Thank you for taking care of Carrie over the last few days,” Sue said quietly. “I really appreciate it, and I’m sorry that I didn’t see the changes you’ve gone through before.”

“Don’t mention it.” Really. “Besides, I wasn’t so much taking care of her as trying to help stop the murders.”

“Have you decided what you’re doing next?”

The Chris of a few days ago would have bitterly put this question down to Sue doing her aw-shucks-I’m-so-sweet best to put pressure on Chris to stay. The Chris of today… wasn’t quite so sure, but was trying to do her best to give Sue the benefit of the doubt. “I’m not sure,” she said honestly.

Solving this case, for all the terror and the blood, having to battle her way through scepticism and confusion, had made her feel the most alive that she could remember. Had certainly been a charge that she hadn’t felt since well before she’d left Chamberlain. There was a large part of her that didn’t want to give that up.

But exploring the spooky shit side of things… that’d mean remaining with Carrie. And despite everything that had passed between them, could she really trust Carrie not to hurt her again?

Could she really break the promise to herself that she’d never let something like Billy happen to her again?

It felt like it wasn’t the same, that there were the obvious changes in circumstance she could point to, but did she really trust herself to know how different it really was?

“I think Carrie would really appreciate seeing you around now and again, even if you can’t stay,” Sue said softly. After a beat, she added, “So would I.

And… “Maybe.” That was all Chris could think to say right now.

The silence between them stretched thick and heavy, but luckily it didn’t take too long for a gas station came into view and Sue pulled into it. Chris got out and, after stretching her legs for a few minutes, fished around in her pocket for a few coins, found an old battered payphone and punched in the number of the garage.

“Gilpatrick’s Triple G.”

“Hi,” Chris said. “It’s Anne.”

“Huh. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you anytime soon.” He didn’t seem displeased that she’d bucked his expectations, though.

“Yeah, it turns out that solving the killings got a little more hairy than any of us were expecting. But they are, now. Solved, I mean. And I thought you’d want to know that Sharon’s at peace, finally.”

She was fairly sure that was the case, at least. The feeling from the knife when she’d finally smashed the necklace, the shackle that her bastard husband had laid around her neck all those years. Chris recognised that, at least a little.

She didn’t think Sharon would be back to slash any more perceived oppressors, having finally escaped her own. And, maybe, somehow, all the people she had touched might be able to feel a little of that relief as well.

“Oh,” Gary said, sounding choked. “So that was him, then, behind the killings?”

“Yeah.” It was… true enough, if you looked at it in a certain way. “We finally managed to destroy the knife he killed her with. He won’t be hurting her or anyone else, ever again. I just thought you deserved to know.”

“Thanks,” he said, sounding choked. “I didn’t… I keep on thinking, what if I’d done something back then. But thank you for letting me know it’s over, that she’s at peace.”

“I’m fairly sure she’d want you to know. Take care, okay?”

“You too. You’ll always have a job around here if you ever want to swing back this way.”

“Thanks,” Chris said, more touched than she really wanted to admit. Even if it didn’t seem that wise, they way they’d left things with Gabriel. She hung up.

And as she headed back to the car, she felt a little lighter.


	29. Carrie

Carrie jumped as Sue cleared her throat nervously, drumming her fingers against the steering wheel. It wasn’t as though her stomach was still knotted and sore after the tension of the last few days, but… It wasn’t as though that wasn’t still true either.

“I think,” Sue said, then stopped, swallowing, her eyes anxiously seeking out Carrie and Chris out in the back. She visibly nerved herself and started again. “I think I’m going to take some time. To figure myself out. By myself.”

Oh.

That was…

It was like all of Carrie’s nightmares coming true at once. This was her fault, for being greedy and grasping and Sinful and seeking out that which she did not deserve.

She was going to lose Sue, had lost Chris and it was all her fault.

She should have never let herself believe this could ever last. That anyone except her mother would ever really stay.

She dug her fingers into the seating until her knuckles turned white while Sue carried on talking, the words washing over her as she was unable to concentrate on them.

Why would anyone want to be around her? She was unwanted, defective, useless.

No.

No, she wasn’t useless. She’d stopped the feds, had helped unleash the knife even if it had been Chris’ strength that had kept it in check.

She had wanted to help stop the murders and she had. She could do it again, wiser, a little more aware of the supernatural world around her.

She could do it again, with or without help. Though she’d certainly prefer with.

She could survive by herself. She could. She could always settle somewhere for a while, find a job like Sue would, maybe even pick up some sewing or dressmaking. Take some time to get her feet under herself, until she could get a car from somewhere, find her next case.

She could do this.

When she looked outwards again, Sue was looking at her, having run herself out of words, panting a little, a slightly stricken expression on her face. She was fairly sure that Chris was keeping a cautious eye on her as well. Doubtless seeing how she’d react, but it no longer felt malicious in a way it once would.

And, now that she could look outside of herself and her own panic, Sue looked so injured, so desperate.

Because of course she would, after what she’d been through. Of course she would.

She forced a smile onto her face. “Whatever you need, Sue. Don’t worry, I’m a big girl. I can look after myself.” She let the expression settle more naturally. “Take your time. And if you ever want anything, I’ll be there.” Like she’d been there for Carrie, ever since those last days in Chamberlain.

Sue relaxed. “Thanks, Carrie,” she said with some degree of relief.

A pang of guilt went through Carrie, that she’d been so needy that Sue had thought she might not let go if Sue asked.

A small part of her whispered that she might not have been wrong a little while ago. But she could be stronger now, better now. Not just for Sue, but for herself as well.

She turned towards Chris. “Is that alright? If we stay with you for a little while longer. Until we each find a place we can stay for a while?”

“Actually,” Chris said, twisting her mouth into a smirk. “I was just thinking that I wanted to talk to you about that. What would you say about a team up? At least on a trial basis. We seemed to work fairly well together, at least over the last couple of days and, well.” She gave an eloquent shrug. “It’s not like I’ve got anything better to do at the moment.”

Carrie stared at her. “What?” she asked, torn between disbelief and hope. “Are you sure?”

Chris shrugged lazily. “It was kind of nice being the person in the know, having people look to me about what’s happening. Why wouldn’t I want that again?”

Carrie bit her lip, trying to tamp down on the spark of hope inside her chest. “And what about not giving anyone a second chance to hurt you?”

Chris looked away. “Maybe I’m not willing to let that control me.” She turned back to give Carrie a fierce look. “As long as it never happens again.”

Carrie gulped and gave Chris a weak smile. She’d like to be able to promise that, would like to believe that she’d never hurt someone she’d finally come to like, but…

“I think I already did that last night,” she said in a small voice. “What does it say if I can’t go two days without hurting you again.”

“That’s—” Chris replied instantly before stopping and thinking for a minute. “That’s different,” she said finally, firmly. “I asked you to do that if I lost control and I can’t exactly blame you for jerking me away when I lashed out at Sue.”

“And you trusted her when it counted,” Sue said quietly, gaze fixed firmly ahead.

“I guess,” Chris said, but the slight smile she gave them both was warmer than her laconic words. “So? Deal?”

It was Carrie’s turn to look out the window. Being stuck with Chris without Sue would have been her worst nightmare just a few days ago and a part of her still couldn’t help worrying. What would happen the next time Chris’ mood turned? Would she really refrain from using her words like vipers? For that matter, Carrie wasn’t sure that she’d be able to refrain from picking a fight if Chris began to wear on her. Even if she didn’t use her power, without Sue to keep the peace, there’d probably be more yelling.

They just have to find a way to deal, the two of them, she decided firmly. They were adults now and if they wanted to do this together, they’d have to act like it.

She turned back to Chris and held out her hand. “Deal,” she said.

And, as Chris gave her a wider, more genuine smile and took her hand, Sue gave them a soft look from the front. “Thanks, both of you, for doing this. Burying the hatchet. Now be sure to look after each other. You both deserve it, okay?”

Chris stretched out theatrically. “Sure, if you insist.” She rolled her eyes and Sue rolled her eyes right back at her.

Carrie gave Chris a sidelong look. Despite how perfect and hard Carrie might have thought her at school, despite how prickly and tough she might have seen ever since… yeah, she could believe it.

And maybe she even wanted to. Maybe she did think that Chris did deserve a little looking after, every now and again.

She gave them both a cautious smile. “Yeah,” she said. “I think I’d like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do have some vague sketching about a couple of followup stories — one focusing on Carrie and one on Sue, and how they all figure out how to fit together — which I might write if there's interest.
> 
> Like I said at the beginning, writing a story with a strong mystery subplot is something that's new for me and I'm not sure how well it works. Hopefully well enough? Feel free to let me know in the comments.
> 
> Oh, and if anyone was interested in the very geeky joke contained within the title, most unstable solutions for three body problems tend to result in one of the bodies being expelled from the system and the two remaining forming a stable orbit around each other. Not quite what happened in the end, but not _not_ what happened either, I guess.


End file.
